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OCTOBER, 19O3. 



Frontispiece-KAKi ANDI K-.ON. Narrative of a Journey from St. 

The Waste, of a Great City JOHN &M"K^ '" X*"""*' 

\\ t, . \\ IURY, Commissioner of Street 

Cleaninir, New York City. Illustrations by The Witnesses. MARY R. S. ANDREWS. 

EDWIN b. CHILD. Illustration by I!. R. CAM: 

Th !S ^S <5r Eight "' -<* as^nSSSS Xt 

DERSON. 

What They are There for. CYRUS TOWN- Falth . Poem . GEORGE CABOT LODGE. 

State Universities. W. S. HARWOOD. 

^SSSK^^^vlSS! Jim '" 8c ^ nd Fo ^T f - J r K L SCHUL - 

, FV jl \ rm. lllu.-tration by KARL ANDERSON. 

Some Phases of Trade Unionism. 
The Southwest from a Locomotive. \\ u , KK A. \Vv, KOFF. 

lllustrat.ons by K. L. Thc pQjnt of v , ew ._ THE R IG HT TO 

KIsEP THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL. 

The House and the Road. Poem. The Field of Art. -THE AMERICAN 
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English, Scotch, Irish 



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THE ANCESTOR 

A Quarterly Review of County and 

Family History, Heraldry 

and Antiquities 



EDITED BY 

OSWALD BARRON F.S.A 



NUMBER VII 
OCTOBER 1903 



ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD 

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CONTENTS 

THE MASSINGBERDS OF SUTTERTON, GUNBY AND 

ORMSBY THE REV. W. O. MASSINGBERD i 

ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE . J. HORACE ROUND 15 
THE JOURNEY OF GEDEON BONNIVERT TO IRELAND 

MRS. OSWALD BARRON 26 

THE FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 33 

THE FAMILIES OF THE STRANGERS: THE COSTEBADIES 



ANCESTOR. VOL. VI. 
Two important printer's errors arc pointed out for correction. 

Page 6. In the title of the portrait, for 'MATTHEWS' read 'MALTHUS.' 
Page 201, line 15, for 'childless' read 'attainted.' 

ANCESTOR. VOL. VII. 

The Editor having been absent from England during the pubfication of ANCESTOR 
rtt. rjj. asks the indulgence of hi, reader, in the case of errors of proof- 
reading, two of which are noted below. 

Page 169. In the 9 th line of the article on the Wrottesleys, for 

' past ' read ' part.' 
Page 269, line 5, for 'is' read ' make.' 



FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE REV. CHAS. SWYNNERTON 216 

A CHARTER OF GOSPATRIK . . THE REV. F. W. RAGG 244 
THE BARONS' LETTER TO THE POPE 

J. HORACE ROUND, SIR H. MAXWELL-LYTE, K.C.B., W. H. ST. 

JOHN HOPE and the EDITOR 248 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 2 6o 

EDITORIAL NOTES 26o 

The Copyright of all the Articles and 1 lluttrationt 
in thii Review is strictly reserved 



CONTENTS 

FACI 

THE MASSINGBERDS OF SUTTERTON, GUNBY AND 

ORMSBY THE REV. W. O. MASSINGBERD i 

ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE . J. HORACE ROUND 15 
THE JOURNEY OF GEDEON BONNIVERT TO IRELAND 

MRS. OSWALD BARRON 26 

THE FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 33 

THE FAMILIES OF THE STRANGERS : THE COSTEBADIES 

CHAS. E. LART 45 

THE DEATH OF THOMAS, THIRD EARL OF ROCKING- 
HAM, AND THE MONSON-WATSON SUCCESSION 

TO HIS ESTATES CHAS. WISE 54 

THE RISE OF THE POPHAMS . . . . J. HORACE ROUND 59 
THE JACKSONS IN IRELAND . . SIR EDMUND T. BEWLEY 67 
THE HEREFORD FAMILY OF PLYMOUTH. A. F. HERFORD 71 

A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 75 

A TALE OF BRISTOL CITY BOWER MARSH 90 

WILL OF ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX 

LOTHROP WlTHINCTON I OO 

ENGLISH COSTUME OF THE EARLY FOURTEENTH 

CENTURY 108 

THE COURT OF CLAIMS W. PALEY BAILDON 137 

NORTH MEOLS 142 

A DICTIONARY OF CAMBRIDGE MEN 148 

HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 149 

PATENT ROLLS OF HENRY IV 163 

OUR OLDEST FAMILIES : VIII. THE LANGTONS. IX. THE 

WROTTESLEYS 1 66 

WHAT IS BELIEVED 177 

A FIFTEENTH CENTURY ROLL OF ARMS 184 

ON SOME FORGOTTEN SWYNNERTONS OF THE 

FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE REV. CHAS. SWYNNERTON 216 

A CHARTER OF GOSPATRIK . . THE REV. F. W. RAGC 244 
THE BARONS' LETTER TO THE POPE 

J. HORACE ROUND, SIR H. MAXWELL-LYTE, K.C.B., W. H. ST. 

JOHN HOPE and the EDITOR 248 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 260 

EDITORIAL NOTES 269 

The Copyright of all the Articles and Illustration! 
in this Review it strictly reserved 




.'I,,;?,,/. //', 









THE MASSINGBERDS OF SUTTERTON, 
JNBY AND ORMSBY 

JT has be*.- .-; r stion that 1 der- 

ramily. 
moft 



G , j^noble blood 

'... ever since the flood, 

young, 
on have been fool* ?o long. 






of 



;e who have 2 perse 

ave had a other documents which others 

aght riot r 

the name of Massingberd 
vriters who 

i must have Massingberg. But 



1 Berde ' or ' herd ' was u c 

and Wycliffe, and e late as 

ears ago the country people, among whom 
s often preserved, used to write and pron< 

.rJ, as we fi 
! 1592. ' MJT 

may denote 

rku a man with a ' br.. 
'd son of Mars. 
:rs were attach t 
Vlgerkyrk of a pie,- 



THE MASSINGBERDS OF SUTTERTON, 
GUNBY AND ORMSBY 

IT has been with considerable hesitation that I have under- 
taken to write an account of my own family. Nothing is 
more contemptible than mere pride of family, so well satirized 
by Pope : 

Go, if your ancient, but ignoble blood 

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood, 

Go, and proclaim your family is young, 

Nor own your fathers have been fools so long. 

But the history of private families is a subject of interest 
beyond those whom at first sight it seems to concern : it 
connects itself with that of the district, and of the times, they 
have lived in, while their gradual rise, or their sudden ex- 
tinction, equally afford matter for contemplation. Moreover, 
there are some who think that family history is best written 
by those who have a personal interest in it, and in this case I 
have had access to charters and other documents which others 
might not find it so easy to search. 

As regards the etymology of the name of Massingberd 
opinions seem to differ. There are writers who insist upon 
giving to the name a foreign origin, and with that object assert 
that it must have been originally spelt Massingberg. But 
the facts are strongly against them ; the earliest notices of the 
name as well as the later are alike in favour of the present 
spelling. ' Berde ' or * berd ' was used for * beard ' down to 
the times of Chaucer and Wycliffe, and even as late as thirty 
or forty years ago the country people, among whom a correct 
tradition is often preserved, used to write and pronounce the 
name Massingfortra', as we find it in the Visitation Pedigrees 
1562 and 1592. 'Maessing' is said to signify in Anglo- 
Saxon c brass,' so may denote that the first who bore the name 
was abenobarbus a man with a ' brazen beard.' 

In 1288 Richard son of Margaret of Suterton, Lambert 
Massyngberd and others were attached to answer to Walter 
son of Alexander of Algerkyrk of a plea why they assaulted 



2 THE ANCESTOR 

him at Algerkyrk by force of arms, and beat him, to the grave 
damage of the same Walter, and against the peace. 1 
In 1368 we find this document : 

Edward by the Grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland and 
Aquitaine, to the sheriff of Lincoln greeting. Command John son of Walter 
Shephird of Soterton, that justly and without delay he render to Hugh 
Massyngberd of Soterton, and to Lambert his brother, one acre and a half oi 
land with appurtenances in Soterton, which William Sourale, senior, gave to 
Alan son of Lambert Massyngberd in free marriage with Athelina daughter of 
the same William. And which after the death of the aforesaid Alan and 
Atheline ought to descend by the form of the aforesaid gift, as they say, to 
the aforesaid Hugh and Lambert, the sons and heirs of the same Alan and 
Athelina, etc. 

Witness ourself at Westminster 15 Feb. in the 4znd year of our reign.* 

Thus we learn that Lambert Massingberd, who lived in 
the time of King Edward I., had a son Alan, who married 
Athelina daughter of William Sourale, and had two sons, 
Hugh and Lambert. 

Alan Massingberd's name appears under Sutterton in the 
Subsidy Rolls of i Edw. III. and 6 Edw. III. 3 In 1333 
Lucy daughter of Thomas Sourale complained that Geoffrey 
Merlyn, Thomas de Multon of Fraunketon, knt., Alan 
Massyngberd, and others imprisoned her at Algerkirk, took 
her as a prisoner to Fraunketon, detained her there, and car- 
ried off her goods at Algerkirk.* 

Alan's widow in 1359 claimed certain lands in Algarkirk 
as her dower. In 1 406 Thomas Symond of Soterton by his at- 
torney offers himself the fourth day against Hugh Massyngberd, 
Lambert Massyngberd, and John Leke of Soterton, of a plea 
why the corn in the sheafs of the same Thomas to the value 
of 405. at Soterton were by force and arms depastured, trod- 
den down and consumed. And they did not come, and the 
sheriff was commanded to attach them, etc. And he now 
reports that they have nothing : therefore let them be taken, 
etc., that they be here within 1 5 days from Easter Day. 5 

About this time Hugh's son, Thomas Massingberd, left 

1 De Banco Roll, 75, m. 101, Mich. 16-17 Edw. I. 

J Quoted by Robert Dale, Suffolk Herald, in his manuscript, ' Genealogical 
History of the Most Ancient Family of Massingberd,' compiled at the be- 
ginning of the eighteenth century. 

3 Lay Subsidy Rolls, Lincoln, *f and \'r- 

* Ca/. of Patent Rolls, 1330-4, p. 496. 

* De Banco Roll, 580, Hilary, 7 Hen. IV. 



THE MASSINGBERDS 3 

Sutterton for Burgh, having, according to the Lincolnshire 
Visitation Pedigree 1562, married Juliana daughter and heir 
of Thomas Bernak. And we find Thomas having c common 
in le north common of Burgh ' in I4IO. 1 In 1414 Thomas 
Massingberd of Burgh was witness to a charter of William 
Buttercake, and in February, 1434-5, he quitclaimed certain 
lands in Burgh, etc., to Thomas Whetecroft. 2 

The lands at Sutterton seem to have been parted with, but 
the ' Massingberd Chapel ' in Sutterton Church still com- 
memorates the early home of the family. 

The Bernak marriage is of interest. Thomas Bernak's 
father was Gilbert, brother of Sir William Bernak, the hus- 
band of Alice, daughter of Robert de Driby and Joan de 
Tattershall. His mother is said by Dale to have been Agnes 
daughter and heir of Owen Mablethorpe. His grandfather 
was Sir Hugh Bernak, and his grandmother Maud daughter 
and co-heir of Sir William de Woodthorpe. 3 And in an 
illuminated pedigree, compiled in 1655 for Henry Massing- 
berd, esqr., and given by Sir William Massingberd to Burrell 
Massingberd, as after his death the male representative of 
the family, these quarterings are in the Massingberd arms 
Bernak (a crescent for a difference), Woodthorpe and Mable- 
thorpe. The Bratoft and Arden arms were quartered after 
the marriage of Sir Thomas Massingberd with Joan daughter 
and heir of John Bratoft. And the second Massingberd coat, 
viz. gold a cross gules with the ends cut off between four lions 
sable and with five escallops gold upon the cross, is said to 
have been acquired by Sir Thomas Massingberd, who became 
a knight of St. John of Jerusalem on the death of his wife. 
The son and grandson of Thomas Massingberd continued to 
reside at Burgh. Robert, his son and heir, married Agnes, 
daughter and heir of Robert Halliday of Burgh, by whom he 
had five sons. Of these Thomas is stated by Dale to have 
married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Lord 

1 Court Rolls of the manor of Candlesby at Magdalen College, Oxford. 

* Charters at Gunby Hall. 

3 The following Fine shows Hugh de Bernak in possession of lands at 
Woodthorpe in right of his wife, Feet of Fines, Lincoln, file 45 (73), 47 
Hen. III. (iz6z). Between Hugh de Bernak and Maude his wife, Peter de 
Kyrketon and Elizabeth his wife, Richard de Marisco and Alma his wife, 
plaintiffs, and Roger, prior of Markeby, tenant, of eight acres of land in Wude- 
thorp. Remise and quitclaim to the prior for themselves and the heirs of 
their wives. 



4 THE ANCESTOR 

Hoo and Hastings by Eleanor his wife, daughter of Lion, 
Lord Welles, and the following document seems to confirm 
the statement : 

This indenture made 2 July, 1 7 Henry VII., between Thomas Fenys 
(Fiennes), knt., and Richard Devenysh, esqr. of the one part, and Anne 
Massyngberd, daughter and heir of Thomas Massyngberd, of the other part, 
witnesseth, that the said Anne hath bargained and sold, etc., to the said 
Thomas, and Richard, all the right, title, etc., which she hath in the manor 
of Morehale with appurtenances in the shire of Sussex, and all other land 
which the s d Anne possesseth in other parishes in Sussex. 1 

Elizabeth married secondly Sir John Devenish, knt. Richard, 
son and heir of Robert Massingberd, married Maud, daughter 
of Thomas Kyme of Friskney, and had also five sons, of 
whom Christopher became Chancellor of Lincoln in 1532 and 
Archdeacon of Stow in i543> and dying in 1553 was buried 
in Lincoln Cathedral in the south aisle where was a ' marble 
whereon a brass, and escocheon with four coats, viz. : 

1. Azure three cinqfoils gold and a golden boar passant 
in the chief with a cross formy gules upon him. MASSINGBERD. 

2. Three helms and a border engrailed. HALLIDAY. 

3. A fesse. BERNAK.. 

4. Three crescents lying bendwise between two cotises.' 2 
John Massingberd of Calais, another son, is mentioned 

several times in Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic. 
In 1534 Lord Lisle writes from Calais to Cromwell that John 
Massingberd is of the king's retinue. A view was taken 
i August, 1534, by Lord Lisle, Deputy, Sir Robert Wynge- 
fylde, and John Massingberd, alderman, commissioners in this 
behalf, of such things as need reparation for the sure defence 
of the town of Calais. And amongst those who provided 
' Lodginges for the French Kinge within the towne of Calays ' 
on the occasion of the famous interview between Henry VIII. 
with Francis I. in 1532 was John Massingberd. 

The eldest son and heir of Richard, afterwards Sir Thomas 
Massingberd, knt., married Joan, daughter and eventually 
sole heir of John Bratoft of Bratoft Hall. In 1495 Agnes, 
widow of Richard Braytoft of Gunby, deceased, quitclaimed 
to Thomas Massingberd and Joan his wife, and the heirs of 
Joan, all right in lands in Braytoft, Gunby, Thedylthorp, or 
elsewhere in the county of Lincoln, which lately belonged to her 

1 Close Roll, 17 Hen. VII. No. i. 
3 Bishop Saunderson's Survey. 



THE MASSINGBERDS 5 

said husband, except certain lands assigned to her in his last 
will. 1 Richard Braytoft was grandfather to Joan and Agnes 
her sister, who was prioress of Crabhouse in Norfolk, and it 
seems that Thomas Massingberd and his wife had removed 
to Bratoft Hall before the end of the fifteenth century. Sir 
Thomas was amongst those who were made Knights of the 
Sword, 30 May, 1533, on the coronation of Queen Anne 
Boleyn. 2 He had four sons, of whom Oswald became a 
Knight of the Order of S. John of Jerusalem. As his signa- 
ture is found 8 April, 1522, to a resolution of an assembly of 
the English Tongue, 3 it seems that he took part in the famous 
siege o? Rhodes, and in c the yielding equal to a conquest,' 
when the brave Grand Master and his knights, 20 December, 
1522, surrendered the island they had so long defended 
against vastly superior numbers to the Turkish Sultan, Soly- 
man. 

In 1543 Sir Oswald Massingberd was elected Lieutenant 
Turcopolier, in 1 547 he was nominated Prior of Ireland under 
certain conditions, and when that office was confirmed to him 
by Queen Mary he was allowed the dignity by Bull of the 
Grand Master, 2 August, 1554 ; but he does not appear to 
have been given actual possession of the priory of Kilmainham* 
until 1557, and in the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign 
an Act was passed 5 for the Restitution of the late Priory or 
Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Ireland and all manors 
to the Imperial Crown. Not appearing before the Lord 
Deputy Sir Oswald was { attainted Traytor of High Treason,' 
and as nothing more is known of him it may be concluded 
that he passed his last days in exile. 

Sir Thomas Massingberd died 25 May, 1552, and was 
buried in Gunby Church, where is a fine brass with this in- 
scription : 

S r Thomas Massyngberde knight and dame Johan hys wyfe specyale desyrcs 
all resuabull creatures of your charyte to gyfe lawde and prays unto . . . 
queen of cverlastyng lyfe wyth . . . 

The authorities say that from the costume the brass must 
have been engraved c. 1400-5, but its earlier history is un- 

1 Charter at Gunby Hall. 

3 Col. of Letters and Papert Foreign and Domestic, vol. vi. 
Facsimiles of Records in the Knights' Library at Malta. 

4 Commissary Letters of Cardinal Pole. 
* Irish Statutes, 1560, chap. viii. 



6 THE ANCESTOR 

known. Of five shields two only remain, one with the old 
Massingberd arms, the other with the same impaling a coat 
now destroyed. 

Augustin Massingberd, eldest son of Sir Thomas, married 
Margaret daughter of Robert Elrington of Hoxton, co. 
Middlesex, and had four sons. Of these William had a grand- 
son, John Massingberd, who became an eminent merchant in 
London and treasurer of the East India Company. He re- 
sided at Tooting in the parish of Streatham, and dying 
23 November, 1653, was buried at Streatham, where a monu- 
ment was erected in the church bearing the following inscrip- 
tion : 

Here lyeth the Body of John 

Massingberd Esquire who departed 

this Life the xxiij of November MDCLIII 

leaving Coecilia his Wife with Two 

Daughters Elizabeth and Mary. The 

Elder married, some years before, to 

George Berkeley, only son of the 

Lord Berkeley : the younger since 

to Robert Lord Willoughby, eldest 

son of the Earle of Lyndsey. 

John, another son of Augustin, married Dorothy, relict of 
Ralph, second son of William Quadring of Irby, and eldest 
daughter of Sir Robert Hussey of Linwood, lent., and one of 
the coheirs to her mother Anne, a daughter and coheir to 
Sir Thomas Say of Listen, co. Essex, brother of Sir William 
Say. John Massingberd and Dorothy his wife, with others, 
the heirs of Sir William Say, levied a fine, Hilary, 1569, of 
the manor of Benington, Herts, to the use of Walter 
Devereux, Lord Viscount Hereford ; and by deed 10 July, 
1573, they sold to Anthony Crane all the estate of the said 
John, and Dorothy, one of the coheirs of Lady Ann 
Bourchier, deceased, or of Sir William Say, knt., deceased, in 
the manor of Wickham Hall. 1 

Augustin Massingberd purchased before 1538 Crescy, 
alias Markham's manor in Bratoft, but died 17 February, 
1550, before his father. So that Sir Thomas was succeeded 
by his grandson * Thomas, who was elected M.P. for Calais 
9 February, 1552-3." He is said to have gone out of Eng- 

1 Clutterbuck's History of Herts, iii. 412. 

2 Chancery Inqs. p.m. 4 Edw. VI. pt. 2, No. 46, and 6 Edw. VI. pt. 2, 
No - *S- 3 Blue Book, i March, 1878. 




SIR DRAYNER .MASM.N(;W;RI>, KM. 
n. 1615. D. 1689. 



THE MASSINGBERDS 7 

land in Queen Mary's day on account of his religion, whither 
he returned after her decease. He had by his first wife Alice, 
daughter and heir of Richard Bevercotes of Newark, through 
whom he acquired a considerable access of fortune, three sons 
and three daughters, and by his second wife, Dorothy, daugh- 
ter of Richard Ballard of Orby, one son and three daughters. 
He made his will 27 August, 1584, and it was proved 25 
November, 1584, he being buried at Gunby 3 September, 
1584. 

His eldest son and heir, another Thomas, had resided at 
Saltfleetby during his father's lifetime, and, as Thomas 
Massingberd of Saltfletbie, settled the manor of Bratoft Hall 
in the parish of Gunby, and Markham manor in Bratoft, on 
his father for the term of his natural life, with remainder to 
himself, 15 July, 1574.' He married Frances, daughter of 
George Fitzwilliam of Mablethorpe, by whom he had three 
sons and nine daughters. He died n September, 1621, 
leaving Thomas Massingberd his son and heir of the age of 
56 years and more. 3 This Thomas was a barrister-at-law, and 
resided some time at Louth. He married Frances, daughter 
of Robert Halton of Clee and of Joan his wife, daughter of 
John Draner of Hoxton, co. Middlesex, and sister and heir of 
Thomas Draner of the same place. He died suddenly on his 
way to church, being buried at Gunby 6 November, 1636. 
Out of three sons two survived him, Henry and Draner. 
Henry was baptized at Gunby, 28 August, 1609 ; in 1627 he 
was admitted as Fellow-Commoner at Christ's College, Cam- 
bridge, and was entered at the Inner Temple 7 June, 1629. 
He married, 13 December, 1632, Elizabeth, youngest daugh- 
ter of William Lister of Rippingale and Coleby. His six 
sons by this marriage died unmarried. Of three daughters 
Frances married, first, George Saunderson of South Thoresby, 
cousin to George Lord Viscount Castleton ; secondly, John 
Bond of Revesby ; thirdly, Timothy Hildyard ; and Eliza- 
beth married 2 June, 1662, at East Barnet, Herts, Sir Nicholas 
Stoughton, bart. s Henry Massingberd married, secondly, 
Anne relict of Nicholas Stoughton of Stoughton, uncle of 

1 Charter at Gunby Hall. 

1 Chancery Inq. p.m. 19 James I. pt. 2, No. 73. 

3 Add. MS. 6,174. Sir N. Stoughton's Papers. The marriage settle- 
ment of Frances Stoughton, 1693, and will of Sarah Stoughton, 1702, are 
at Gunby. 



8 THE ANCESTOR 

Sir Nicholas, and daughter and eventually sole heir of William 
Evans by Margaret his wife, daughter of Robert Wake, fifth 
son of Thomas Wake of Hartwell. A property at Potters- 
grove, co. Beds, was 30 June, 1652, settled on Anne, wife of 
Henry Massingberd,and sister and sole heir of John Evans, esq., 
deceased, for life, with remainder to William her son, but was 
sold to Wriothesley, Duke of Bedford, in 1 707, for 5, 940.' 
Under her marriage settlement 26 May, 1 1 Car. I., a Anne 
had the mansion house of Stoughton for life, and she and her 
second husband resided there at first, but released their rights 3 
to Nicholas Stoughton, son and heir of Anthony, 9 January, 
1655, for ^3,250. By this lady Henry had three sons and 
one daughter. He married as his third wife 27 November, 
1679, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Thomas Rayner, for whom 
he provided a jointure out of a lease for 500 years of the 
manors of Peverells and Thwaites in Paston, co. Northamp- 
ton.* By this marriage he had a son who died an infant. 

Dale, no doubt in accordance with the wishes of the 
family at the time he wrote, states that Henry Massingberd 
1 retired into France during some time of the Confusions con- 
sequent on the Grand Rebellion, having alway preserved an 
inviolable allegiance to his Lawfull Sovereign, and was there- 
fore upon the Restauration of the Royal Family most de- 
servedly promoted to the Degree and Dignity of a Baronet 
among many other Loyal Persons by Letters Patent bearing 
date at Westm r 22 Aug. 1660.' Unfortunately for his accu- 
racy it is not only well known that Henry, together with 
Draner his brother, was indicted for high treason at Grantham 
in 1 643, but he was high sheriff 3 for Lincolnshire during the 
time of the Commonwealth (1654-5), and moreover was 
created a baronet by Oliver Cromwell in 1658, the patent 
being now at Gunby, and the preamble stating that this 
honour was conferred ' as well for his faithfulness and good 
affection to us and his country, as for his descent, patrimony, 
ample estate and ingenious education, every way answerable, 
who out of a liberal mind hath undertaken to maintain thirty 
foot soldiers in our dominion of Ireland for three whole years.' 

1 Deeds at Gunby. There was another estate at Southhill, Beds. 
a Add. MS. 6,174. 3 Deed at Gunby. 

4 Settlement at Gunby. 

5 Draner Massingberd's Sheriff's Roll mentions (1655-6) 'Henry 
Massingberd, esq., late sheriff.' 




ELIZABETH MARY ANNE (MASSINGBERU), WIFE OF PEREGRINE LANGTON. 
B. 1780, u. 1835. 




BF.NNKT LANT.TON OF LANGTON, B. 1736, n 1801. 

fix Sir Joshua Rtynolds. I'.K.A. 




MAKY DOWACICK COMNTKSS OF KOTIIKS, WIFE OK |!I-:N\KT LANOTON. 

By Sir Josliu., Kf,',i,,l.ls, I'.K.rl. 




SIR WILLIAM MASSINGBKRU, THIRD HART. 
H. 1677. i>. 1723. 



THE MASSINGBERDS 9 

It is true however that Henry obtained a pass 1 6 September, 
1646, to go abroad ; but he certainly returned afterwards, 
though by some means or other he ingratiated himself into 
favour at the Restoration, and was re-created a baronet. He 
died in 1680, and was buried at Gunby 18 September; his 
widow married William Ash, and they resided at Paston. 
Sir Henry's successor was his only surviving son by his 
second wife, Sir William Massingberd, second baronet. He 
married 1 1 July, 1673, Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Wynne, 
by whom he had three sons and nine daughters, most of whom 
died as infants. He was high sheriff for Beds 6-7 William 
and Mary, but died in 1719, leaving a son and heir, Sir William 
Massingberd, third and last baronet. He was elected M.P. 
for the county of Lincoln in 1722,' but died unmarried at 
his house in Golden Square i December the same year. 

There being no male descendants left of the first baronet, 
the baronetcy expired, while the estates passed under a settle- 
ment 2 19 November, 1723, to his sister Elizabeth, wife of 
Thomas Meux, for life, with remainder to William Meux her 
son in tail male, and in default to his brothers Richard and 
Thomas successively in tail male. Richard Meux is the an- 
cestor of the present baronet of the name. William Meux, 
the eldest son, succeeded to the estates, and took the name 
and arms of Massingberd in 1738. His grandson, Henry 
Massingberd of Gunby, dying in 1784, left an only daughter 
and heiress, Elizabeth Mary Anne, who married Peregrine 
Langton, 3 second son of Bennet Langton of Langton and 
Mary Dowager Countess of Rothes his wife. Mr. and Mrs. 
Peregrine Langton obtained licence from the Crown to assume 
the name and bear the arms of Massingberd only, with due 
distinctions, the arms * to be * Azure three quatrefoils, 2 
and i, in chief a boar passant or : for a difference a canton 
erminois ' ; ' the crest, a lion's head erased azure, charged 
with two arrows in saltire, argent, between four guttes d'Eau : 
for difference, surmounted by an escallop or.' Of their four 
sons Algernon Langton Massingberd, the eldest, married 
6 December, 1827, Caroline Goldsworthy, daughter of 
William Pearce of Weasingham Hall, Norfolk, and succeeded 
to his mother's estates. He died 24 September, 1844, and 

1 Blue Book. ' At Gunby. 

3 Act of Parliament 9 June, 1 809. 
* So exemplified by Sir Isaac Heard, knt., Garter. 



io THE ANCESTOR 

his only son and heir Algernon is supposed to have been shot 
on the Amazon River in July, 1855. He was succeeded by 
his uncle, Charles Langton Massingberd, who by his first wife 
Harriet Anne, daughter of Richard Langford, left two daugh- 
ters. He married, secondly, Harriet daughter of Sir Robert 
William Newman, first baronet, of Mamhead, who survives 
him. Dying 9 February, 1887, he was succeeded by his 
eldest daughter, Emily Caroline, who had married Edmund 
only son of Rev. Charles Langton, and whose only son 
Stephen now resides at Gunby and owns the estate. 

Returning to the male line of the family we find that 
Draner, otherwise Drayner, Massingberd, youngest son of 
Thomas Massingberd or Bratoft and Frances Halton, his wife, 
born ii December, 1615, was admitted into the Society of the 
Inner Temple 11 May, 1633. He seems to have inherited a 
considerable fortune through his maternal grandmother Joan, 
sister and heir of Thomas Draner of Hoxton, who settled 
upon him the manor of Hinxworth, Herts. This fortune 
enabled him to purchase Ormsby of Willoughby Skipwith in 
1638. 

All papers that would show that Drayner Massingberd 
actually fought against the forces of the king during the Great 
Rebellion have been carefully destroyed, but there is no doubt 
that he raised a troop of horse in the service of the Parliament, 
and the tradition can hardly be wrong that he commanded it 
himself. It seems to have been for this reason that he received 
a special pardon from Charles II. at the Restoration. There 
is also at Ormsby Hall a rare copy of the banners and devices 
of the leaders on either side, in which is the flag of Captain 
Massingberd with a scroll, on which is written : 

IN TE DEXIFI SUNT OCULI NOSTRI. 

The justification he would set forth for taking up arms against 
his king appears in an entry in a copy of the works of Machia- 
velli, where beneath his signature he writes : ' Justum est 
bellum, quibus necessarium, et pia arma, quibus nisi in armis 
spes est.' 

He was colonel of a troop of horse under the Common- 
wealth in 1650,' and High Sheriff for Lincolnshire for two 

1 Cal. of State Papers (Domestic), 1650. 




BURRKI.I. MASSIXI;BERD. 
B. 1683, i). 1728. 



THE MASSINGBERDS n 

years, 1 1655-6, 1656-7. And yet at the Restoration he not 
only received a pardon, but was knighted 17 February, 1661. 
Drayner Massingberd married first Elizabeth, daughter and 
coheir of Abraham Burrell of Medloe, co. Hunts, the marriage 
settlement 1 bearing date 20 May, 1651, by whom he had no 
issue, though the manor of Medloe was settled on him and his 
issue male. He married secondly Anne, daughter of Henry 
Mildmay of Graces in the parish of Little Badow, co. Essex, 
the marriage settlement 3 being dated 25 November, 1678, by 
whom he had two sons and four daughters. Dying 1 1 May, 
1689, aged 73, he left his son and heir, Burrell, under age. 
He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and as 
early as 1704 had thoughts of enlarging his Lincolnshire 
estates by selling Hinxworth to provide part of the money, and 
in 1715 he purchased Driby. He married Philippa, daughter 
of Francis Mundy of Osbaston, co. Leicester, and Markeaton, 
co. Derby, the marriage settlement 2 being dated 7 July, 1714, 
by whom he had two sons. Philippa was an intimate friend of 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, several of whose letters are 
preserved at Ormsby, among them the following letter of con- 
gratulations on her marriage : 

My dear Phil, (for so I will still call you) tis impossible to have heard 
any news w th more satisfaction than I did y 1 of your happynesse, and y 
obliging complem' you make me of having contributed to it. I do not doubt 
the continuation of it, as I know you have every Quality to make a good 
Husband as well as a passionate Lover. I confesse, contrary to y' generallity 
of my sex, I am of opinion, y' both good and ill Husbands are their wives 
makeing, for as Folly is y root of all matrimonial Quarrells y' distemp' com- 
monly runs highest of y c womans side. I have nothing of y' nature to fear 
from you, y' good humour and good sense will raise the esteem of Mr. Mas- 
singberd every day, and as your Beauty grows Familiar to his eyes, y' conduct 
and conversation will fix his Love on a Foundation y' will last for ever. 
W'ever Romances and heat of youth impose on y c minds of young people 
Passion is soon sated, and a real friendship and natural value, the only tye y' 
makes Life pass easily on, w" 2 Friends agree to lessen each others care, and 
joyn in promoteing one and y* same Interest. I am extreamly glad my dear 
Phil you are happy in a Husband capable of this friendship. I do not doubt 
Mr. Massingberd being sensible of y c Advantage he has above the rest of man- 
kind, for tis a thing more uncommon and a greater Blessing to marry a reason- 
able woman than a fortune of 10,000. I am my dear Mrs. Massingberd 
w* a sincere pleasure in y r happynesse, faithfully yours, M.W.M.' 

1 Sheriff's Roll at Ormsby. Order of attachment in collections of E. L. 
Grange, esq. 

1 At Ormsby. 



12 THE ANCESTOR 

Burrell Massingberd died in 1728 at the comparatively 
early age of 44, being the only owner of Ormsby who died in 
the eighteenth century. He was succeeded by his eldest son 
and heir, William Burrell Massingberd, who was only eight 
years old at his father's death. He was High Sheriff for the 
county of Lincoln 1744-5. In December, 1745, he went to 
meet Prince Charles Edward at Derby, but was sent home, 
bearing with him the miniature of that prince which is still to 
be seen at the house he built at Ormsby. He married Anne, 
daughter and heiress of William Dobson, sometime Lord 
Mayor of York, and Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Christopher 
Tancred ofWhixley. The marriage settlement 1 is dated 1746. 
Mrs. Massingberd's mother was Catherine, daughter of Sir 
John Armytage, bart., whose father Sir Francis had married 
Catherine Danby, sister of Sir Thomas Danby, who died in 
1 660, being the direct male heir of Sir Christopher Danby and 
Margaret daughter of Thomas Lord Scrope of Masham. 
Under his will, dated 1705, Christopher Tancred left his 
widow executrix, notwithstanding which his son (Christopher) 
upon his death, c though not of age, turned his sisters out of 
doors and refused to give them anything for their support, 
so that they must have starved had it not been for kind 
friends.' 2 In 1721 this affectionate brother ' in consideration 
of the affection he bore to his manor house of Whixley, 
and being desirous his estate should never be dismembered 
by distribution among heirs female,' settled it so as to educate 
eight students at Christ and Caius Colleges, Cambridge, and 
maintain '12 decayed and necessitated gentlemen' in his 
house at Whixley. Christopher Tancred having died in 1754 
a Chancery decree in 1757 declared that his will, which con- 
firmed the provisions of the settlement, conveyed all the 
Whixley estate, except the advowson, which ' not being part of 
the estate that would afford an annual profit for the purpose 
of the charities did not pass, but must descend to the heirs at 
law.' Thus the advowson is in the possession of Mr. Massing- 
berd-Mundy. Mr. Massingberd had by Anne his wife two 
sons and six daughters. William Burrell Massingberd, the 
younger son, was rector of Ormsby 1780-1823, but died un- 
married. Anne Massingberd, the eldest daughter, married 
Rev. William Maxwell, D.D., and had issue John, who died 

1 At Ormsby. 8 Statement at Ormsby by William Dobson. 




s - 

ft 

~ 




u 

H 




CHARLES UURKELL MASSINGBBRD. 

11. 1749. u. 




CHARLES BUKKKI.I. MASSI.NGBERD. 
i). 1749. i). 1835. 

By N. Daiut 




ANNK (BtACKAU,), WIFE OF CHAKLKS BUKRELI. MASSINGBKRD. 

By Angtltia Kaiijfman 



THE MASSINGBERDS 13 

unmarried, and Anne, who married Rev. H. F. Lyte, the 
writer of the well-known evening hymn, 'Abide with me.' 
Elizabeth, the youngest daughter, married her cousin Francis, 
rector of Washingborough. Charles Burrell Massingberd, the 
eldest son and heir, High Sheriff for the county of Oxford in 
1778, married first, 29 December, 1774, Ann, daughter and 
heir of William Blackall late of Braziers, co. Oxford, by whom 
he had an only daughter and heiress. He married secondly 
in 1781 Marie Jeanne, second daughter of Captain Rapigeon 
of Versailles, who survived for many years after his death but 
had no issue. His daughter and heiress, Harriet, married in 




THE ARMS OF MASSINCBERD FROM A BRASS AT GUNBY OF TUB 
EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 

1806 Charles Godfrey Mundy, second son of Francis Noel 
Clarke Mundy of Markeaton, co. Derby, and their son and 
heir, Charles John Henry Mundy, succeeding to the estates in 
1863 on the death of his grandfather's widow, took the name 
of Massingberd in addition to that of Mundy, and his only 
surviving son and heir is the present Mr. Massingberd-Mundy 
of Ormsby Hall. But on the death in 1 835 of Charles Burrell 
Massingberd of Ormsby his nephew Francis Charles Massing- 
berd became male representative of the family. Burrell Mas- 
singberd, besides William Burrell, his son and heir, left a younger 
son, Francis Burrell Massingberd, who married 14 June, 1750, 
Maria, youngest daughter of Thomas Fanshawe of Parsloes in 



1 4 THE ANCESTOR 

the parish of Dagenham, co. Essex. His only surviving child 
Francis Massingberd, born 24 October, 1755, was for ten 
years curate of Dagenham, when he was presented by Mrs. 
Buckworth to the rectory of Washingborough near Lincoln, 
and admitted July, 1815, to the prebend of Sutton-in-the- 
Marsh. He married 14 April, 1795, his cousin Elizabeth, 
youngest daughter of William Burrell Massingberd of Ormsby, 
by whom, besides two daughters, he had a son Francis Charles, 
educated at Rugby and Magdalen College, Oxford, rector of 
Ormsby 1825-72, and chancellor of Lincoln 1861-72. He 
married 15 January, 1839, Fanny, eldest daughter of William 
Baring, sometime M.P., fourth son of Sir Thomas Baring, 
first bart., and had issue by her two sons. 

W. O. MASSINGBERD. 



ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE 

IT is obviously not to a popular magazine that we should 
look for accurate information on a subject so beset by pit- 
falls as the right of certain English families to foreign tides of 
honour. Yet the article in the Windsor Magazine for May 
( x 93) on ' English Peers who are Foreign Princes,' may claim 
honourable exemption from figuring in the pages reserved for 
'What is believed." The mysterious countships of the Empire 
which adorned the house of Feilding find no place in its pages ; 
but then has not also that gorgeous engraving of Sir Percy 
Feilding's achievement which formerly decked the immaculate 
pages of Mr. Fox-Davies' Armorial Families been discreetly 
removed from the latest edition of that work ? Again, the 
Duke of Marlborough's Princedom of the Empire, which is 
still recognized in Burke 's Peerage) is duly mentioned here as 
that of ' Mindelheim of Suabia,' but the author adds, to his 
credit, that c it is very doubtful, however, whether the present 
Duke really holds the Princedom.' We may venture to 
assert that he certainly does not, and that it has not been held 
since the great duke's death. But it is strange to find so 
careful a writer omitting the one peer who is really a Prince 
of the Empire, for of Lord Cowper's princedom there would 
seem to be no doubt. 

The two tides, however, on which we must join issue are 
the Countships of the Empire assigned by the writer to Lord 
Clifford and to Master and the Misses Buder. 

The oldest foreign title held by an English peer is held by Baron (fit) 
Arundell. The first great member of the house, Sir Thomas Arundell, was 
created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire in 1595 . . . and ten years 
later England herself recognized his worth by making him Baron (tie) Arun- 
dell. . . . The title of Count was to be inherited by the male and female 
members of the family alike, so that when the daughter of the eighth baron 
married Baron (tie) Clifford (another Catholic) the latter inherited the count- 
ship, which is still borne by his descendant. 

Both in this case and in that which follows the countships, 
we may add, are fully recognized in Burke' s Peerage, but are 
wholly ignored in the Gothaiscbes Genealogiscbei Tascbenbucb 

'S 



1 6 THE ANCESTOR 

der Graflichen Hnuser (1903), although the countship of Lord 
Arundell duly appears in that work. 

Master Horace George Butler (born 1 898), of Ewart Park, Wooler, North- 
umberland, is the Count St. Paul in the Holy Roman Empire ; his great- 
great-grandfather, Horace St. Paul, joined the Austrian army as a volunteer. 
. . . For his services he was, in 1759, created a count, upon the field of 
battle, by the Emperor of Germany, Francis I., husband of Maria Teresa of 
Austria. The litde Count's mother, who died in 1901, married Mr. George 
Grey Butler, J.P., whose litde daughters, Hethe (born 1896) and Irene (born 
1901) are entitled to be called Countesses. 

The two cases are precisely similar, and a consideration of 
the point involved should enable our readers to judge for 
themselves all such claims to foreign dignities. 

The English idea of ' nobility,' as Professor Freeman has 
observed, is, owing to our system of peerage, radically distinct 
from the foreign one. 

In England . . . the Peerage ... at once set up a new standard ot 
nobility, a new form of the nobility of office. The peer in strictness, the 
peer only, not even his children became the only noble. ... In a word, 
the growth of the peerage hindered the existence in England of any nobility 
in the Continental sense of the word. . . . [English nobility] takes in only 
the peers personally ; at the outside it cannot be stretched beyond those ot 
their children and grandchildren who bear the courtesy titles of lord or lady. 

But if it is difficult for an Englishman, at first, to grasp a 
system of nobility so widely different from our own, he will 
do so when it is explained to him that this foreign system has 
for its principle the ennobling alike of every member of the 
family descended from the patentee, but not the ennobling of 
other families descended from him through females. As this 
principle is expressed by G.E.C., when he throws doubt on the 
Princedom or the Empire assigned to the Duke of Marl- 
borough, 

The grant of that dignity is in the usual form, which, it is considered, 
entitles all male descendants to that dignity, as also for their lives (but not with 
right of transmission) the daughters of such male descendants. 1 ' - : ^ 

On this principle every member of the ancient house of 
Arundell of Wardour, who was descended from Thomas 
Arundell the first Count of the Empire, would be entitled, 
in strictness, to the title of count or countess, but, of course, 
there would be no right of transmission to other families; nor, 
indeed, does one see what title could be transmitted. Would 

1 Complete Peerage, v. z;5, note. 



ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE 17 

Lord Clifford, for instance, claim to be styled ' Count Clifford ' 
or ' Count Arundell ' ? The point, however, is that the 
countship is either transmissible through females or it is not. 
If it is so, all the individuals that can trace descent, through 
females, from the first Lord Arundell are equally entitled to 
assume it ; and the name of these must be Legion. To pick 
out one, and one alone, of all the daughters of the house of 
Arundell as entitled to transmit the countship and that to 
her heir, not to her descendants is obviously to confuse the 
descent of the title with that of an English barony in fee.' 

Debrett describes Lord Arundell as ' a Count of the Holy 
Roman (Old German) Empire (1595), a dignity which, by 
special grant, descends to each of his heirs male and female 
for ever ' ; but Brydges Collins (vii. 45) gives an abstract of 
the charter of creation limiting the dignity c so that every of 
his children and their descendants for ever of both sexes 
should enjoy that tide, have place and vote in all Imperial 
diets,' etc. ! Amidst all this confusion it is most desirable 
that the actual words of the limitation should be made known. 

Now let us apply the above principle to the case of the 
countship of St. Paul. The last baronet, a Count of the Empire, 
left a daughter and sole heiress, who not as his heiress, but 
as his daughter was entitled, no doubt, in strictness, like all 
daughters of a count, to the title of Countess. But she was 
no more entitled than any other daughter to transmit that 
title to her offspring. Nevertheless in Burkes Peerage, under 
' Foreign tides of nobility borne by British subjects,' we find 
her son recognized, since her death (1901), as Count St. Paul, 
although his armorial bearings are conspicuously omitted. 
Those who are curious in such matters will find those of his 
mother as ' The countess St. Paul ' (she died 26 April, 1901) in 
the 1 902 edition of Mr. Fox-Davies' Armorial Families, where 
the countess is entered as living. On a background, apparently, 
of clouds of glory, rampant lions uphold banners, while also 
supporting, with a skill that a trained poodle might envy, a 
wondrous galaxy of arms. 

No indication is given in Burke of the source or title of Lord Clifford's 
countship, but it appears to be claimed in right of the fact that, of the two 
daughters and co-heirs of the eighth Lord Arundell, one married the ninth 
Lord, and the other Lord Clifford. In Debrett we read accordingly of the 
latter's son that he was ' in right of his mother a Count of the Old German 
Empire,' and that this dignity has descended to the present peer. 



1 8 THE ANCESTOR 

It illustrates the untrustworthiness, in such matters as these, 
of our recognized books on the peerage that while Burke formally 
recognizes Master Butler as Count, Debrett, adopting our own 
view, significantly allows the dignity to his late mother only. 
And there is another point. It would probably be gathered, 
from the pedigree in Burke, that the late ' countess ' was the 
sole descendant of the house ; but the family of Orde of 
Weetwood (Northumberland) is descended from her aunt, a 
daughter of the first baronet (see Burke 's Landed Gentry), and, 
therefore, as in the Arundell case, we ask why the dignity is 
supposed to be transmitted by one daughter of the house, but 
not by another ? Debrett is here inconsistent, for while not 
recognizing the Butler claim, it does recognize, as we have 
seen, that of Lord Clifford. 

To the house of Clifford, with its romantic history and its 
pedigree extending, probably, to the Conquest, a visionary 
Countship of the Empire can be but of small account. To 
the house of Butler, on the other hand, the countship is a 
great matter ; it procures admission to Burke s Peerage, even 
if in somewhat dangerous proximity to the pages devoted to 
advertisements. Accordingly, a significant alteration has been 
made, since the death of the countess, in the sentence which 
used to inform us that Sir Horace St. Paul (2nd bart.) c obtained 
a royal licence for himself and his successors to use the title 
in this country.' l This sentence now runs : * Sir Horace 
obtained a royal licence, 7 September, 1812, for himself and 
the other descendants male and female of his father the rst 
Count to use the tide in this country.' Those who have 
followed our argument will see that this vague limitation is 
not what is wanted ; and yet we hear nothing of any subse- 
quent step authorizing the transmission of the title to the 
Butler family. Moreover, it is proverbially well always to 
'verify one's references,' and we have therefore taken the 
trouble to hunt up the licence. Its guarded terms, it will be 
seen, confine the permission to those who may be within the 
limitation in the emperor's patent. 

WHITEHALL, Sept. 7, i8iz. 

The Prince Regent has been pleased, in the name and on the behalf of 
His Majesty, to give and grant unto Horace David Cholwell St. Paul . . . 
Henry Heneage St. Paul . . . Charles Maxim illian St. Paul . . . and Anna 

1 This sentence appeared in the editions of 1899-1901, and the licence 
was therein wrongly assigned to the last baronet, who died in 1891. 



ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE 19 

Maria St. Paul, children of the late Horace St. Paul . . . Count of the Holy 
Roman Empire, deceased, His Majesty's royal license and authority, that they, 
upon whom the dignity of Count of the Holy Roman Empire shall have de- 
volved or shall devolve, in virtue of the limitations in the Imperial Letters 
Patent or Diploma, granted by Francis the First, Emperor of Germany, and 
bearing date at Vienna, the zoth day of July 1759, unto t ' le ***& Horace St. 
Paul, may avail themselves of the said honour, assume and use the title thereof 
in this country and bear the armorial ensigns annexed thereto. 1 

It ought to be observed that this licence extends only to 
the patent of 1759, and cannot, therefore, apply to Master 
Butler and his sisters, if they are, as must be presumed, 
in the absence of evidence to the contrary, outside its limit- 
ation. Is this why Burke 3 Peerage omits ' the armorial en- 
signs ' ? But, in that case, why does it recognize the countship 
to which they are * annexed ' ? 

We have dealt with the Count ' in ' Count St. Paul ' : 
let us now deal with the ' Saint.' It is not from the Peerage, 
or from similar works, recording merely names and dates, that 
we shall learn the true origin of this canonized and comital 
house. On it, therefore, the Ancestor proceeds to turn its 
flashlight. 

On Millbank, in its pre-penitentiary days, in fact when 
George the First was king, there dwelt two Westminster citi- 
zens of credit and renown. The one was Samuel Paul, a 
brewer, the other, Nathaniel Collins, * an eminent distiller, who 
by his industry and frugality had acquired a great estate.' 
Both Samuel and Nathaniel as indeed their names might 
tempt us to guess were ' well affected,' in the phrase of the 
time, to the Whig c settlement ' in Church and State ; * and 
both received their reward. For their names were placed on 
the Commission of the Peace. The two worthies died within 
a fortnight of each other Nathaniel on 19 August, 1720, 
Samuel on the 3ist, and, to crown all, the distiller's daughter 
married the brewer's son. From this ' bottle and jug ' alliance 
sprang the Counts of the Empire. Judith, the daughter of the 
frugal distiller, canonized her husband's family ; the brewer's 
grandson became a count ; his great-grandson a baronet. 

Our statement as to the canonization is taken from Burke s 
Peerage, where we read of Robert, the brewer's son, that his 
widow obtained an act of parliament, in 1768, to authorize 

1 London Gazette. 

* PoKtical State of Great Britain, xx. 160. 



20 THE ANCESTOR 

the assumption of the additional surname (sic) of SAINT.' But 
here is a difficulty. The Emperor's countship had been 
granted no less than nine years before this Act was passed. Is 
the grantee styled therein Horace ' Paul ' or Horace ' St. 
Paul ' ? If the former, the title has never been ' St. Paul ' ; if 
the latter, by what right had the prefix 'St.' been assumed ? 
Is it possible that when Horace Paul the family had already 
abandoned the names of the Old Testament sought service 
with the emperor, he adopted the aristocratic name to which 
he was not entitled, as likely to stand him in better stead at the 
Court of Vienna ? 

The family arms, perhaps, throw light upon the question. 
These last appeared in Burkes Peerage in 1891 (the year in 
which the baronetcy became extinct), when those of St. Paul 
(borne on an escutcheon) were blazoned as 'argent, a lion 
rampant double-queued gules ducally crowned or.' As Ulster, 
acknowledged in that edition the assistance of English officers 
of arms, these arms must be authentic, and indeed, they 
are recognized as valid in Mr. Fox-Davies' work. It is 
obvious that we are in the presence here of no mere eighteenth 
century coat, but of one of the great shields of medieval 
Europe. Turn to the pages of Pere Anselme, and there you 
will find staring you in the face the arms of the French 
branches of the mighty house of Luxembourg, ' d'argent au 
lion de gueules la queue nouee fourchee, et passee en sautoir, 
arm couronne d'or lampassd d'azur.' From the reigning 
house of Luxembourg there sprang kings and emperors, whose 
lion gules with its golden crown, rampant on a silver field, was 
derived from the counts and dukes of Limbourg, their own 
direct ancestors, rulers of Limbourg as far back as the days of 
the Norman Conquest. Theirs was the ancient and glorious 
coat annexed by our brewer's offspring with the sanction, we 
gather, of the Heralds' College. We venture to suggest that 
the ' frauds ' and ' impostors ' denounced by its frenzied 
champions may congratulate themselves that they are guiltless, 
at least, of such an outrage upon ' armory ' as this. 

But, it may be asked, why should an Englishman called 
Paul, or even St. Paul, adopt or obtain arms virtually indis- 
tinguishable from those of the house of Luxembourg ? Pere 
Anselme again supplies the clue to the enigma. A branch of 

1 Ed. 1728, iii. 722, 729, 731, 735, 737. 



ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE 21 

the house, Luxembourg-Ligny, married the heiress of the 
Comtes de St. Pol (or St. Paul) and thus acquired that 
dignity. Thus was founded the house of Luxembourg-St. 
Paul, which continued to bear the Luxembourg coat, though 
differenced by a crosslet on the lion's shoulder. 1 It is clear, 
surely, that someone (whether a herald or not) jumped at the 
conclusion that this was the coat belonging to ' St. Paul,' and 
bestowed it on an English house which happened to bear 
that name. For Sir George St. Paul of Snarford (in North 
Lincolnshire), who was created a baronet 29 June, 161 1, bore, 
according to Burke s Armory, l Arg. a lion rampant double- 
queued gu., crowned or,' 3 which, we have seen, is the very coat 
borne by the heir of the Millwall brewer (whose forbears were 
from Coventry, not from Lincolnshire), with the sanction, if 
we may judge from Mr. Fox-Davies' book, of the College of 
Arms. That this coat is indistinguishable from that of the 
house of Luxembourg is demonstrated, independently, in 
Papwortb's Ordinary, where we find them entered thus : 

Arg. a lion ramp, tail forked gu. crowned or. ST. PAUL, Snarford, co. 
Lincoln. LUXEMBOURG. 

And, lastly, we can actually prove that the coat of the 
(Luxembourg) Counts of St. Paul was known to English 
heralds, for it figures in Mr. Barren's roll of ' fifteenth cen- 
tury arms ' as * silver a crowned lion gules with forked tail. 
COUNT DE SfiYNTPOULE.' 3 The origin of the bearings is thus 
proved up to the hilt. 

How then does the case stand ? Here is a modern family 
of Paul, hailing from Coventry, which not only turns itself 
into St. Paul, for the look of the thing, by Act of Parliament, 
but calmly annexes the arms belonging to a comparatively old 
house of that name, which themselves, as any expert must per- 
ceive, are based, by an obvious blunder, on those of the 
Luxembourg^, Counts of St. Paul, a house which mated with 
the noblest Families of its age ! 4 The much-abused ' heraldic 
stationer ' could hardly beat this record. 

1 Ed. 1728, iii. 725. 

3 He died s.p. bequeathing estates to his heir male, St. Paul of Campsall, 
Yorks. 3 Ancestor, v. 180. 

4 ' Louis de Luxembourg, Comte de St. Paul,' Constable of France, married 
' Jeanne, Comtesse de Marie et de Soissons,' great-granddaughter and heiress ol 
Ingelram, ' Sire de Coucy ' and Earl of Bedford, by Isabel dau. of King 
Edward III. 



22 THE ANCESTOR 

The line taken by the Ancestor, in the matter of armorial 
bearings, has been definite and frank throughout. We are in 
cordial agreement with those who denounce the pirating of 
arms, that is the annexing of a family's coat by another family 
of the same name, but wholly unconnected. But we deny 
that this admitted wrong is at once turned into right when the 
annexed coat is borne with the sanction of the Heralds' 
College, or when the offender is allowed to retain his usurped 
coat in what he can represent as a merely differenced form. 1 
To Mr. Phillimore and his fellows the sanction of the college 
is the only point worth considering ; to us it makes no differ- 
ence ; it cannot turn wrong into right. 

Take, for instance, the arms borne by Lord Gerard with 
the full sanction, as we learn from Armorial Families, of the 
Heralds' College. It has long been well recognized that, at 
some period in its history, the ancient house of Gerard of 
Bryn, dazzled by the splendour of that Irish race of which I 
have spoken in the Ancestor, discarded its own pedigree and 
arms (though the latter continued to be used by other branches 
of the family) and annexed the coat of Fitz Gerald together 
with that family's descent. Reference to Burke's Peerage will 
show that Lord Gerard is assigned ' a common ancestor with 
the Dukes of Leinster in Ireland,' and is indeed derived from 
William, an alleged younger brother of Odo de Carrew.* 
Under ' Leinster ' we similarly read that their father William 
Fitz Gerald was ' ancestor of the families of Carew . . . and 
Gerard.' Lord Gerard accordingly bears, according to the 
same work, the undifferenced arms of the Duke of Leinster, ' Arg. 
a saltire gu.' 

In 1741 Woollen's Baronetage traced the descent of Gerard 
of Bryn from the above William on the authority of a pedi- 
gree in the possession of the family itself, 3 but even so early 
as 1635 Ran die Holme had 'met with very auntient deedes 
to sattisfie any ' that the descent from ' Gerard Fitz Walter of 
Windsor is a false pretence,' and Ormerod * printed one of 
these deeds as disproof absolute of that alleged descent. 5 A 
further deed disproving it was printed in Helsby's edition of 
his work (1882), where the question was further investigated. 8 

See, for an actual instance of this, the Ancestor, iii. 22-3. 

2 See for him the Ancestor, v. 19-25. 

3 i. 52. * Ormerod's Cheshire (1819), ii. 61. * Ibid. 
6 ii. 128-33. 



ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE 23 

It is now certain that the founder of Lord Gerard's family 
was William Fitz Gerard (or Gerrard) who obtained lands in 
Kingsley, Cheshire, by marrying Emma, daughter and co- 
heiress of Richard de Kingsley. This William, who lived 
temp. Henry III., 1 has been thrown back by the pedigree- 
makers to an earlier date in order to make him a brother of 
Odo de Carrew, and in Burkes Peerage his wife Emma has 
been further converted into ' Katherine daughter of Adam de 
Kingsley ' and made the wife of his alleged father William 
FitzGerald !* 

The true arms of the Gerards were altogether different 
from those of the house of FitzGerald,' and were allowed to 
the Crewood branch in 1613 as <Az. a lion rampant erm. 
ducally crowned or ; over all a bend gu.' * It has been as- 
serted that, as Gerard of Bryn disregarded the Heralds' 
visitations till i665, 6 we have no evidence until that year of 
their bearing the arms of FitzGerald. But in the funeral 
certificate of Sir Thomas Gerard (d. 15 May, 1630) taken 
15 Jan. 163! by Randle Holme, 'deputy to the Office of 
Armes,' and signed by the deceased's son, we find the first 
coat on his escutcheon given as * Argent, a saltire gules.' And 

1 Emma appears as his widow in 44 Hen. III. (1*59-60). 

2 Here at last we trace to its origin the strange statement in Old Pem- 
brokeshire FamiRei (p. 1 2) that this William (there styled William de Carew) 
married ' Katharine, a daughter of Sir Adam de Kingsley, in Cheshire.' 
This marriage is foisted into the family pedigree from the fable that the 
Cheshire Gerards belonged to it. 

3 See Helsby's Ormerod's Cheshire, ii. 128, and Chetham Society's Visi- 
tation of Lancashire, 1533, vol. ex. (1882), 186-7 ; and its Visitation of Lanca- 
shire, 1567 (Ixxxi. 8 1, 101), from all which it is abundantly clear that the 
true arms were ' Az. a lion rampant erm. crowned or,* derived from the 
heiress of Bryn, or (previously) the arms of 'Montalt' of Hawarden 
debruized by a bend gules. It has been strongly urged on the ground of 
deeds and of this similarity of arms that the Gerards are really cadets of 
the house of Montalt. 

The case of Gerard is curiously parallel with that of Spenser (see Studies 
iu Peerage and Family History). Each family discovered for itself in the six- 
teenth century an ancestry different from its own, and each assumed with that 
new ancestry the coat of arms which belonged to it. 

4 Helsby's Ormerod, ii. 131. 

* At that of i 5 3 3 ' Gerrard of the Brynne wold not be spoken withall ' 
(Chetham Soc. ex. 182), expressing thereby, on the part of an ancient house, 
a contempt for the heralds and their visitations which must be most distress- 
ing to Mr. Phillimore and his friends. 

" Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society (1882), vi. 203. 



24 THE ANCESTOR 

even in that of ' Sir Thomas Gerard of the Bryne ' (bur. 
12 Oct. 1601) we find it already appearing and indeed alleged 
to be shown on stained glass at Bryn of 1518.* The amazing 
usurpation by the Gerards of the famous Irish coat is thus, 
we see, carried back far into Tudor times. ' We must re- 
member,' however, Mr. Phillimore reminds us, * that an indi- 
vidual cannot create for himself an estate of inheritance in 
the bogus arms he or his ancestors have assumed.' a But the 
case of Gerard shows us that the heralds contradict him in 
this flatly. 

In the Paul case we have a usurpation of a particularly 
glaring kind, which must have been sanctioned by the college 
at some time or other in the past, for, according to Armorial 
Families, it is now recognized as rightful. Of such proceedings 
we can only say, in the words of the Preface to The Landed 
Gentry (1898) : 

Unfortunately, the laws ot arms have been, in these later days, very 
frequently set at nought, and the well-known ensigns of our historic 
families have been assumed by strangers in blood, if not in name, though by 
their own act they have but erected a permanent memorial to the obscurity ot 
their origin. 

There are Howard, Stuart and Montmorency coats which, 
though borne with the sanction of heralds, illustrate the practice 
here denounced. Doubtless, in the Paul case as in these, 
bygone heralds were to blame, but their successors are bound 
by their acts. And, to put it mildly, this being so, the self- 
constituted champions of the college are the last who should 
denounce the 'heraldic stationers.' What are we, for instance, 
to say to such a passage as this from the Preface to Armorial 
Families ? 

Centuries ago the heralds deplored and tried to keep in check the vagaries 
and usurpations of these ' painter-fellows,' as they then described them. . . . 
Then as now the true position and authority of the Officers of Arms was not 
properly known or understood. Then as now these ' painter-fellows ' en- 
croached, and then as now they profited by the lack of heraldic knowledge 
current among the general public, and they purposed to grant, confirm, 
and assign arms . . . which were perfectly legitimate, and which belonged 
to ancient families, which legitimate coats-of-arms these ' painter-fellows ' 
assigned to other families bearing the same or similar names, without the 

1 Chetham Society, Ixxv. 88-9, from 'original funeral certificates of the 
north in State Paper Office.' See also Miscellanea Gtnea/ogica el Heraldica 
(1866), i. 46. 

2 Heralds' College and Coats of Amu regarded from a Legal Aspect, p. 8. 



ENGLISH COUNTS OF THE EMPIRE 25 

ghost of a pretence, and without the shadow of a possibility of establishing 
a descent from the bona fide holders. That was how the abuse began 
centuries ago. At the present time, at the close of the nineteenth century, 
this same abuse runs riot, and now as then, it is in the forefront, and the most 
prominent of heraldic follies. 

We turn to one of the admirable studies on medieval 
heraldry for which we are indebted to the pen of Mr. A. S. 
Ellis, and we find him writing as follows of the beautiful coat 
of the Cayvills of Cayvill, 1 Yorks : 

Tudor heralds, it should here be added, allowed this coat to a Wiltshire 
family named Kaynell of Bridstone ! So much for the improper use of a 
dictionary of arms, even by officials, in those corrupt days. 

'That,' if we may quote Mr. Fox-Davies, 'was how the 
abuse began centuries ago.' Not to his despised 'painter- 
fellows,' but to his beloved ' Officers of Arms ' was due the 
allowance to the Spencers of to-day of the arms of the feudal 
Despencers, with whom they had nothing to do. To them 
also, Mr. Ellis tells us, was due this pirating of the Cayvill 
coat on the very principle of the ' heraldic stationer,' namely 
that the name was ' the same or similar,' with the added offence 
that the heralds, it seems, could not even read their own 
records. 

When one of the champions of official armory accuses 
persons of ' fraud ' and another screams that they ' openly 
break every law in existence,' merely because their arms are 
not satisfactory to these brawlers, our own language may seem 
mild when we suggest that the tale of the Pauls and their 
annexed arms should be for them a chastening thought. * Ah,' 
they may reply, ' the case is different ; the family may have 
annexed the arms " without the ghost of a pretence, and with- 
out the shadow of a possibility ot establishing a descent from 
the bona fide holders " ; but that is a detail of no consequence 
the fees were all duly paid, and the shield of the sainted 
Pauls is now " on record " and hung high above human criti- 
cism.' 

1 A berewick of Howden in Eastrington. 

J. HORACE ROUND. 



26 THE ANCESTOR 



THE JOURNEY OF GEDEON BONNIVERT 
TO IRELAND 

[Gedeon Bonnivert was doubtless a son of a Huguenot family in England. The 
English style of his journal seems to be evidence that he was at least 
brought up in England, although he uses French in a commonplace book 
of his (Sloane MS. 1028). Little can be found of his military career 
beyond what is recorded here. In the campaign in Ireland he would seem 
to have ridden as a private trooper or volunteer, but that he remained 
in the army is shown by the fact that he had a commission as lieutenant 
in Colonel Edward Lee's regiment of dragoons, which commission 
is dated 1 6 Feb. 169!- This regiment was disbanded in 1697, and the 
officers put on half-pay, and with this, Bonnivert's military career 
ended. The tale of his campaign may add little to history, but 
it is none the less an entertaining one, and we have at least the story 
of Boyne Water re-told by one who was on a battlefield which broke a 
dynasty, and there with his eyes open and hugely interested in what was 
going forward. 

He is modest enough for a man of French blood telling his doings 
in the wars, but the story of his lost horse moves us as though it had 
been the freshly happened adventure of a City Imperial Volunteer on 
the veldt. 

The little pocket book in which these things are written down is 
now in the British Museum, a Sloane MS. numbered 1033. HILDA 
BARRON.] 

I CAME out of London the 6th of June 1690 and layn at 
St. Albans. We were to guard 5 carriadges loaded with 
two hundred and fifty thousand pounds for the pay of the 
army in Ireland. 

Saturday the yth we went to Newport Pagnell where a 
troop of dragons relieved us. Wee tarri'd there till Monday 
following then we went to Daventry. Tuesday we went to 
Coissell. 

Wednesday to Stafford the party went, but I left 'em by 
the way and went to meet a friend of mine at Litchfield. About 
foure miles this side of Cosswell there is a stone bridge full of 
the plant call'd maiden hair. 

Thursday I met the party at Namptwytch. Within three 
miles of that place is a very fine house belonging to Sir Thomas 
Delf with a very fine pool full of all wild fowls. You may take 
notice of a carp that was taken there three quarters of a yard 



GEDEON BONNIVERT'S JOURNEY 27 

and odd inches long which is set up as a weather cock at the 
top of y e house. Friday we came to Chester, the chief town 
of the county. Generally Cheshire is a very fine country for 
corn and grass which being intermix'd with fine woods render 
it very pleasant to the eyes. Chester is a very large town of 
great trade it being the sea port town though the ships come 
no nearer on't than 16 miles at a place call'd High-Lake, 
there's the River Dee runs by its walls, and it has a pretty 
strong though but small castle. 

Sir ... Morgan is now Governour of that place. The two 
main streets of Chester have cover'd walks where you may 
walke at the hottest sun free from heat, and in wett weather 
shelter'd from rain ; their shopps are underneath these walks. 
Round about the walls of the citty you may walk upon large 
stones, and have a prospect of the town and country. High 
Lake is the sea port and has but two houses besides the Kings 
store house. Wee stay'd there from monday in the evening 
y* 1 6th till tuesday at 8 in the morning, then we embark'd our 
horses and us selves we hauss'd our saile about three in the 
afternoon, with the tide, but with a contrary wind, which made 
us ply to and fro all that day. About ten in y e night no 
wind stirring we cast anchor till two in the morning. 

All the day after we had no wind and our shipp was only 
carried by the tyde. 

Thursday we fish'd most of y" day and tooke great many 
gornetts and whitings, the sea being in a great calm. That day 
we left Cumberland behind us and endeavour'd to reach the 
He of Man but could not. in the night time the wind arising, 
and pretty favourable for our voyage we left the He of Man 
at our left hand and we discover 'd the coasts of Scotland at our 
right hand, which they call Galloway, and Friday being the i gth 
we came between three Islands and a town call'd Donahadee 
which is a markett town and seems a good pretty one. Wee 
left it at our right and Copplen Hands at our left. Wee saw 
after that at our left the village call'd Bangar, which is but a 
small one but very fitt for vessels to come to the very sides of 
it, both sides are very rocky. That small village is famous for 
Duke Schomberg landing there with the forces under his 
command. Upon your right you see the Castle of Carick- 
fergus which is a strong place ; we took it last yeare and lost 
no great quantity of men. We landed at the White house, 
where we saw on our arrival great nomber of poor people, 



2 8 THE ANCESTOR 

the women are not very shy of exposing to men's eyes those 
parts which are usuall for the sexe to hide. We went that 
night to Belfast which is a large and pretty town and all along 
the road you see an arm of the sea upon your left, and on the 
right great high rocky mountains which tops are often hiden 
by the clouds, and at the bottom a very pleasant wood and very 
full of simples of all sorts. 

The town is a sea port. There is in it the kings Custom 
House, and you see hard by it a very long stone bridge which 
is not yett finished. The town is compass'd round about it 
with hills. The people very civill, and there is also a great 
house belonging to my L d Donnegall L d chief J with very fine 
gardens and groves of ash trees. The inhabitants speak very 
good English, wee stay'd there two days and three nights and 
we went from thence on twesday being the 2jth of June to 
Lisbourn, where there is a great house and good gardens 
belonging now to my Lady Mulgrave ; it was left her with the 
whole estate which amounts to 14000 Ib per annu by my L d 
Canaway, the house is out of repair. There's a markett kept 
there on that day. Wednesday the 24th wee sett forth be- 
times in y* morning, resolv'd to joyn our army which was then 
encamp'd at Loughprickland. We pass'd by Hillsborough, a 
great house belonging to the King standing on a hill on the 
left hand of y e road, and fro thence we went to Druamore 
hard by that place is the Bishops house. The succes 
answer'd our expectation tho' we had a very hard and trouble- 
some day's work. At our arrivall our friends shew'd joy in 
their faces to see us come amongst them, and each of us went to 
his respective tent. Thursday y e 28th of June we marched at 
two of y e clock in the morning and went over the high hills to 
Newry. Tis not to be imagin'd how strong naturally many 
passages are that way ; and besides that many strong tho' small 
forts made by King James, which made me admire many times 
what should have made him quitt those passages, which might 
have ruin'd most part of our army with the loss but of few of 
his own. That day was the first of my seeing the King ride- 
ing in Irish Land, and he had then on an orange colour sash. 
We cross'd the river at Newry which was formerly a strong 
place but now burnt and destroy'd, and encamp'd upon the y c 
side of a hill, where waiter was very scarce. We left Dun- 
dalk on our left hand, it stands by y e sea, and we encamped in 
very rugg'd ground. There as soon as we had order to 



GEDEON BONNIVERT'S JOURNEY 29 

dismount I left my horse to shift for himself, and I tir'd with 
heat and want of drink fell fast asleep for the space of 4 houres. 
Awaked as I was afterwards, I lookd for my horse, but no 
horse to be found, in short I went upon down for about 4 
houres longer ere I could heare any tidings of him, night was 
approaching, we were nigh the ennemy, and were looking every 
minutt to be commanded to horse, but being in this agony, as 
God would have it, I spied upon the side of a banck my 
saddle all in pieces. I soon after found my Gentleman too, but 
however 'twas not without great trouble. Therefore I advise 
all horseman in such case never to part with his horse but if 
he falls a sleep tye y e reyns fast to his arm. The Inniskilling 
Dragoons came there to us. They are but middle siz'd men, 
but they ar never the less brave fellows. I have seen 'em like 
masty dogs runn against bullets. 

Saturday y* 28th we were taken 1 5 men out of each squadron 
to go with a detachment of 1200 to Ardagh ; where we heard 
the late king's army was, the rest of our army stayed behind till 
the Sunday following. Just as we came within sight of y* town, 
we saw the dust rise like a cloud upon the highway beyond it. 
It was the enemy's arriere garde scowreing away with all 
speed. Some dragoons were detach'd to follow them who 
brought back two or three prisoners and many heads of cattle. 
We encamp'd this side of the town the Saturday and the 
Sunday after our Army coming to us, we marched on the 
other side of the River where we encamp'd by a corn field by 
a small ruin'd village. The town of Ardagh is seated in a 
very pleasant soil, and has been a fine and strong borrough, 
as one may see by y e great towrs still extant. King James 
made there very strong works, as if he would have made it 
a place to withstand our Army, and indeed it is a strong seated 
town, being in a plain having a river of one side and boggy of 
y e other. Monday the last of June we marched towards 
Drogheda where the Enemy were, and we came within sight 
of the town at 9 in y* morning, there we drew up our 
horse in three lines and came in order of Battle upon the 
brow of a long Hill. There we saw the enemy and were so 
neare them that we could heare one another speak, there 
being nothing but the river between us. As we were drawn 
up we had order to dismount and every man stand by his 
horse's head. We had not been there long but some of the 
King's Regiment of Dragoons were detached and sent to line 



3 o THE ANCESTOR 

the river side. So they begun to shutt at the enemy and those 
of King James's army at 'em. They had not been long at that 
sport, when the King passing by the first Troop of his 
Guards, the enemy fir'd two small gunns at him one of the 
bulletts greas'd the kings coat : then they play'd on till three 
of the clock upon us, and shott often men and horses. One 
Mr. William of the 3rd Troop of Guard had his arm shott. 
Some of y* Dutch Troop were kill'd and wounded. Indeed 
'twas a madness to expose so many good men to the slaughter 
without neede, for we had no artillery yet come to answer 
theirs. Ours not commeing till 3 in the afternoon. We did 
retire confusedly behind the hill at the sight of the Ennemy, 
when it might have bin better manadged. King James made 
that day a Review of his Army. We had a great mind to 
force a passadge through the river to go to them, but we left 
it till next morning. At three in the afternoon our Artillery 
came up and begunn to play upon theirs stoutly, then the 
ennemy shew'd they had many other batteries besides the 
first. They play'd upon one another till night then we retired 
about a mile sideways. Next morning we were up at two of 
the clock and we march'd to gain a passage two miles of 
about 5 in the morning. The passage was a very steep hill 
and a shallow river at the bottom. That leaded into a very 
fine plain, as we came there we found a party of the Ennemy 
with four or five pieces of Artillery ready to receive us, but that did 
not daunt our men, they went doun briskly, not with standing 
their continual! fire upon us. The Grenadiers and Dragoons 
were first of the other side, and we soon follow'd them, but 
the ennemy made haste away with their Cannon. jjWe 
drew up in battle as we came in the Plain, and marched 
directly toward the place appointed for the Battle. After 
some houres we saw the ennemy comming down a turneing 
between two Hills, which we knew by the rising of y c dust, 
and by and by they shew themselves in their best colours, for 
they drew up upon a line only, and our Army was upon 
three. We look'd upon one another who should come first, 
but at last we seeing that their foot and baggage was running 
away, and that the king had engaged their right way, we 
marched towards them over ditches and tranches. They 
presently retir'd upon a mountain behind a little Town call'd 
Dulick where they fir'd three or foure peeces at us, we 
killed abondance of their men, and pursued the rest till [nine 



GEDEON BONNIVERT'S JOURNEY 31 

of the clock, that we overtaking them, and having too hotly 
pursued them were almost upon them when they faceing about 
made as if they had been willing to receive us, but we have- 
ing left our foot and cannon behind, and considering how late 
it was, made halte. They fir'd for an houre and half 
small shott very thick upon us, for they had hid partly in 
bushes. That day we had all some green on our hatts, to 
know one from the other. At last our cannon came and 
play'd very smartly upon them till the night comming they 
retir'd, and so did we, we laying in the plow'd lands and had 
no tents. That day we lost Duke Schomberg and Dr. Walker 
Governour of Londonderry. They were kill'd in forcing 
the passage. The king himself pass'd that way. Next day 
we stay'd encamped by that place, and there was a popish 
gentleman's house plundred by us. Thursday being the 
3rd of July we came neare a fine house belonging to a papist 
where we encamp'd and where I fell sick of a violent feavor 
and an extream fitt of y e gout in y* same time. I was sent 
to Dublin where I stay'd till Saturday y* I2th. that I went in 
the company of y e Ajutant gfiall of the Danish forces to rejoyn 
our army. That day I went to Kerkollenbridge 16 long 
miles from Dublin. I passed through the Ness, a good bigg 
burrough. At Kerkollenbridge I found our army encamp'd, 
and there we stay'd one night and the next day we marched 
but eight mile. There my sickness continueing, or indeed 
rather encreaseing I was forced to go to Castle-dermatt ; it 
has bin the seat of some of the kings of Lyster, but now is a 
poore beggarly town, though in a very pretty plain. Eight 
miles beyond it upon the high way, is the burying place of 
the kings of Lyster and there you may see the vaults still full 
of bones and some old inscriptions upon large stones. Our 
army went before Watterfond and after the town was sur- 
rendred the king went to lay the siege before Limerick, 
whilst gnall Douglas was gone to endeavour with part of our 
army to take Athlone, but he had no better success there than 
our men at Limerick where through the ill manadgement of 
Capt. Poultney, who haveing had the conduct of eight bigg 
pieces of artillery and several other provisions, unadvisedly 
order'd his detachment to unbridle and turn the horses to 
grass, for Sashfield haveing notice of this fell upon 'em with a 
very considerable party and cut most of the men to pieces, 
took the canon, nail'd them, burnt the carriadges and all the 



32 THE ANCESTOR 

amonitions, and so caus'd by so long a delay and the weather 
growing bad to raise the siege. The king haveing left that 
place, with the loss of many men, took shipping for England. 
Not long after my Ld Marlborough came from England 
with 8000 men and besiedged Cork, he was not long before it 
for it was soon taken but we had a great loss by the Duke of 
Grafton who died few days after, of a wound in his side, 
before Kingsale. After the raising of the siege of Lymerick, 
I came along with our troop, thinking (as the order was then) 
to have gone for England, but after my staying the matter of 
three months, I went to Lurgan in the north of Irland, and 
was quarter'd between Litsenagaroy and Lurgan in the parish 
of Ballandery. 



THE FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 1 

FOR twenty years past Mr. Thomas Middlemore of Mel- 
setter has had search made for records and muniments 
from which the history of his family should be compiled. 
Antiquaries may applaud the pious task, but their experience 
makes them look with apprehension for the large volume 
which follows the making of such a collection. But Mr. 
Middlemore has raised no paper cairn of misapprehended 
words, of tangled facts and helpless guesses, having wisely 
placed his collections in the hands of a well-known genealogist 
by whose skill they appear as an ordered narrative and a 
worthy memorial of the varying fortunes of an ancient stock. 

Here we have in a convenient and consultable form the 
history of the Middlemores who were for three hundred years 
lords of that Edgbaston which is now suburban Birmingham, 
and the history of the cadet branches of the family settled in 
London and Bristol, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Derby- 
shire and Sussex, and indeed of all Middlemores whether the 
link with Middlemore of Edgbaston be found or no. The 
three hundred pages in good type upon handmade paper are 
pleasant to hand and eye, and the book is handsome and 
enduring as befits one which should be a family heirloom. 

The first Middlemore who had Edgbaston was Thomas, a 
citizen and a merchant of London, first heard of in 1396, one 
of the many citizens who have taken their city money-bag into 
the country side from which they came, to live as squires and 
justices of the peace, and to found a house of squires of 
their name. Never coming to knightly rank, the rank of 
squire is not denied to the Middlemores of Edgbaston until 
their passing away. The list of their marriages, which we 
have surely recorded from the end of the fifteenth century, 
allows us to judge of their standing in the county. Richard 
Middlemore, who died in 1 503, married a daughter of that old 

1 Some Account of the Family of Middlemore of Warwickshire and Worcestershire, 
by W. P. W. Phillimore, M.A., B.C.L., assisted by W. F. Carter, B.A. 
Printed for private circulation and issued by Phillimore & Co., 124 Chancery 
Lane, London. 

33 



34 THE ANCESTOR 

house of Throckmorton which was then and now is of Cough- 
ton near Studley. Their son Thomas had to wife Anne 
Littleton from Pillaton, a grand-daughter of the great Sir 
Thomas of the Treatise on Tenures. The next bride at Edge- 
baston Hall was an Egerton of Wrynehill, a younger branch 
of the great Cheshire family, and the next a Greswold of the 
Solihull Greswolds. Robert Middlemore, who died in 1632, 
married Priscilla Brooke of Madeley, grand-daughter of a 
Chief Justice and Speaker of the Commons. Mary Morgan, 
wife of Robert's son Richard, brought a Welsh strain into 
the Middlemore blood, being as it is said a descendant of the 
great clan of the Herberts. The last marriage of a Squire Middle- 
more of Edgbaston was with a Scotchwoman, a daughter of 
Sir Maurice Drummond, one of the first of King Charles's 
knights. The only son of this marriage was Squire Richard 
Middlemore of Edgbaston who died young and unmarried, 
and whose only sister Mary carried the representation of the 
house to the descendants of her two daughters by Sir John 
Gage. 

How little may be recovered of the personal history of a 
family is well shown by Mr. Phillimore's narrative of the 
three centuries of Middlemores of Edgbaston, little can be 
told beyond the dates which inquests, wills and suits at law will 
grudgingly afford. The family is always in the shadow by 
reason of its refusal to conform to the national Church, and it 
was the fate of English Nonconformists of the Roman 
obedience to fall out of the national life. Even the religious 
misfortunes of the Middlemores make little interesting ' copy ' 
for Mr. Phillimore, who can do little with bare details of fines 
and orders of sequestration. Blessed Humphrey Middle- 
more was indeed one of those Carthusians who suffered in 
1535, but there is nothing but his surname to connect him 
with the Edgbaston house, although Mr. Phillimore finds a 
place for him tentatively as fifth child of Richard Middlemore 
and Margery Throckmorton upon no grounds whatever, with 
a William Middlemore as an elder brother, on the ground that 
a William Middlemore was presented to Birdingbury rectory 
by a Throckmorton. Here as elsewhere, although no positive 
assertion is made, Mr. Phillimore is far too ready to assume 
that Middlemores whom he finds without the fold are probably 
younger sons of the chief of the name in Warwickshire. 

The civil war of king and parliament brings some colour 



FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 35 

into the history. Here at least dates and cramped facts give 
us Richard Middlemore of Edgbaston as a cavalier in arms for 
the king, and the Middlemore houses of Edgbaston and 
Hawksley come into history. Edgbaston Hall is seized by 
* Tinker ' Fox, a parliament colonel, and four hundred horse 
and foot crowd the manor house and its barns. By the fortune 
of war Squire Richard rides to the siege of Hawkeslow House, 
the seat of Middlemore of Hawkeslow his distant kinsman 
of a younger branch, and the records of the parliamentary 
committee which dealt with cavaliers' lands tell us that Richard 
offers to bring a great sum to the king's party if they would 
ride to Edgbaston Hall and purge it of Tinker Fox. But 
this cavalier was dead long before the commissioners nibbed 
their pens, and royal gratitude at the blessed restoration made 
full amends for the sufferings of the Middlemores by setting 
the name of the young heir of the house in the list of those 
who were to be Knights of the Royal Oak. So Middlemore 
would have come to knighthood at last had the young man 
lived and had the order of the Royal Oak been saved from 
the fate of King George's order of Minerva. 

After dealing with the Middlemores of Edgbaston Mr. 
Phillimore follows the pedigree of a family of the name living 
in London and Bristol, and citizens and clothworkers of Lon- 
don. They were presumably cadets of Edgbaston, but the 
five generations in which they flourish and disappear offer 
nothing for comment. The Middlemores of Haselwell are 
of more importance. The first of them is one John Middle- 
more of whom nothing more than his name is known, yet he 
is nevertheless on the authority of a herald's pedigree given 
unquestioned place as a second son of the Warwickshire 
family. He married one Alice, said on the same authority to 
be daughter of William Lye of Haselwell, which Alice brought 
her husband her manor of Haselwell in Kings Norton. They 
are succeeded by a son John, whose marriage with Alice Rotsey 
is supported by a reference to a pedigree by Vincent, which 
pedigree conflicts with the one recorded by the heralds in 
1634. Here as elsewhere Mr. Phillimore is in the painful 
position of one who must cast discredit upon the value of the 
officially recorded pedigrees, which in this case have decided to 
suppress John Middlemore and his wife together. Like their 
cousins at Edgbaston these Haselwell Middlemores carried a 
heavy burden in their religion until Robert Middlemore con- 



36 THE ANCESTOR 

formed under Charles I. They seem hardly to have risen to 
squires' rank, and ended with William Middlemore, a London 
apothecary and son of a London cheesemonger, who succeeded 
in 1 700 on his uncle's death, and died in 1 709. The family 
had thrown out several cadet branches, but no living descend- 
ant from them is known to Mr. Phillimore since Colonel 
Robert Frederick Middlemore of Grantham died in 1896. 
For this family of Haselwell as for the main line the civil war 
makes history, George Middlemore of Haselwell being a 
captain for the king and suffering plunder at Haselwell Hall. 
The branch at Grantham was founded by George Middlemore, 
who died in the year of the plague and the fire, a prosperous 
Russia merchant. His son Richard followed in the law a 
trade with even greater possibilities, and acquired Somerby 
manor in Lincolnshire by foreclosing upon a mortgage. He 
was a barrister, a notary public, a registrar of the archdeaconry 
of Lincoln and some time a filager in the common pleas. He 
took commissions from attorneys for bringing business to them, 
and is recorded as having joined with another in buying for 
480 ioj., a license to sell oranges, lemons and other fruit and 
' confects ' in the theatres of Dorset Garden and Drury Lane. 
The large sum paid for this concession calls up a picture 
of pit and galleries deep in orange-peel and sticky with ' con- 
fects.' Through his mother, Mary Sherard, he could claim 
kinship with great folk, and so it came about that his son John 
Francis Richard Middlemore was an esquire to his kinsman the 
Lord Viscount Tyrconnel, when the viscount became Knight 
of the Bath in 1725. The esquire was a barrister as his father 
had been and was devisee of Wickenby manor under the will 
of his cousin Sir Brownlow Sherard. The esquire's son was 
the third barrister of the line, and enriched the family muni- 
ments by keeping an itinerary of his rides through Eng- 
land and Scotland an itinerary full of the polite observation of 
houses and gardens, picture galleries and statues which may 
be looked for in such eighteenth century documents. This 
family ends with a banker and three soldiers. The first soldier 
is barrack-master in the Isle of Man in 1766. His second 
son is solicitor and banker in Nottingham, and a third son is 
General George Middlemore, who has the distinction of being 
the only Middlemore who has found a place in the Dictionary 
of National Biography's populous temple of fame. He bought 
himself an ensigncy a pair of colours as his contemporaries 



FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 37 

would have called it in 1792 for 600 guineas. He came to 
India in 1799, just too late for Seringapatam, but on his 
second visit to India he saw service in the Mahratta war under 
Sir David Baird. In the Peninsular war he was at Talavera, 
leading his regiment after its colonel had fallen when it moved 
to the relief of the Guards, gaining its badge of the Cold- 
stream Star for the 48th and a mention in despatches for 
Major Middlemore. In 1835 Major-General Middlemore 
was governor of St. Helena, and in 1 840 he raises his cocked 
hat in scores of lithographs and engravings as the body of 
Napoleon starts on its journey from Longwood to Paris. He 
seems to have been a good and useful officer and died a 
lieutenant-general in 1850 in Tunbridge Wells. With his 
second son, Colonel Robert Frederick Middlemore, the Middle- 
mores of the Grantham branch ended in 1896. 

Another cadet branch of Middlemore of Haslewell is 
traced out by Mr. Phillimore in the Middlemores of Great 
Sheepey in Leicestershire. They begin with Josias Middle- 
more, of whom Mr. Phillimore with all a lawyer's contempt 
can but say that ' he was one of that class of persons who are 
unable to conduct business.' His estate of Great Sheepey, 
whose mild and foolish sounding name seems to make it an 
apt appanage of poor Josias, came to him by his mother, but 
it slipped away from him nevertheless. He begins long suits 
at law with his half brother of Haslewell, suits which are 
carried on to the days of his grandchildren ; but the suits 
never bring back Great Sheepey. In 1641 he pleads as 'a 
distressed prisoner in the common gaol,' and in 1661 he can 
still write himself' a poor prisoner in Leicester gaol.' In this 
quality no doubt he dies, and his son George dies soon after 
in 1669. George's son Humphrey, who, like his grandfather, 
gnaws the old file of the law, is sometimes of Stepney, a yeo- 
man, sometimes of St. John's, Wapping, and St. Dunstan's, 
Stepney, a deal merchant. A son or him may have been a 
seaman ; in any case these Middlemores go down into 
obscurity ; and Middlemores, now humble folk in the east 
end, may trace the woes of their straitened lives to that in- 
ability of Josias Middlemore to conduct business. 

From these unfortunates it is pleasant to read of Middle- 
mores who have gone down the ladder but to scale it again. 
Middlemore of Edgbaston and Middlemore of Haslewell are 
gone leaving no descendant acknowledged of their name and 



38 THE ANCESTOR 

blood. From a third house, however, Middlemore of Hawkes- 
ley, comes the Middlemore to whose liberality the family owes 
this present record of its existence. 

This house of Middlemore of Hawkesley or Hawkeslow 
begins its story with Nicholas Middlemore, styled younger son 
of Thomas Middlemore, the first of Edgbaston, and husband of 
Agnes, daughter of Thomas Hawkeslow of Hawkeslow in 
Kings Norton, the same parish in which lies the manor of 
Haslewell, the seat of another branch of Middlemore. That 
this third family of Middlemore was of kin to Middlemore of 
Edgbaston and Haslewell there can be little doubt, but it is 
none the less necessary to point out that no better evidence 
for the existence of Nicholas its ancestor or of Agnes his 
wife can be adduced than the fact that they decorate the top 
of the pedigree compiled centuries after by the industrious 
Vincent, a genealogist whose industry was more noteworthy 
than his accuracy when he came to deal with documents of the 
medieval period. The suggestion that the occurrence of the 
name of Nicholas when set beside the name of Nichole, which 
was the name of ' Agnes Hawkeslow's ' great-great-grand- 
mother, makes a coincidence corroborative in any degree of 
the existence of Nicholas Hawkeslow is quite unworthy of 
Mr. Phillimore, for we protest that Nicholas is a sufficiently 
common name although qualified by Mr. Phillimore as ' not 
very common,' and Nichole, which he labels ' unusual,' is 
well known and of frequent occurrence in the fourteenth 
century. Here, as in an earlier case, we must remind 
Mr. Phillimore that there is no commoner trick of the 
Elizabethan heralds than the trick which would account for 
the possession of a manor by the marriage of an early ancestor 
with the female heir of the earlier owners of the manor. In 
this case the Elizabethan pedigrees do not agree amongst 
themselves, and Mr. Phillimore quotes one which makes 
Thomas of Nicholas. Our doubt increases when we find 
that for John, son of Nicholas, and for his wife, a ' daughter 
of Jennings alias Eye of Eye,' the sixteenth century pedigree 
compilers are our only authorities. With Thomas, son of 
John and grandson of Nicholas, we touch fact at last. Mr. 
Phillimore styles him 'of Hawkeslow,' although he admits 
that his only valid reference styles him of Throgmorton. As 
* Thomas Myddulmore armiger de Frogemorton ' he is ad- 
mitted with his wife Eleanor to that gild of Knowle whose 



FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 39 

gild-book has thrown so much light on Warwickshire gene- 
alogy. As no record connects him with his alleged son, the 
pedigree of the Middlemores of Hawkeslow may begin, for 
the careful genealogist, with that son William Middlemore, 
gentleman, who under that style makes his will in 1549, and 
desires to be buried in Kings Norton church by his first wife 
Margery. Dorothy, a second wife, survived him. His first 
wife is called daughter of Robert Gatacre of Gatacre, and 
William Gatacre, a brother-in-law, is an executor of the will ; 
but no evidence is given for the marriage. If the mention 
of William Gatacre may be allowed to prove a Gatacre 
marriage, why must Margery and not Dorothy be selected ? 
The very elaboration and careful preparation of Mr. Philli- 
more's pedigree warrants us in asking this, and in asking also 
the compiler's authority for assigning all the nine children of 
William Middlemore to his first marriage bed. Such refer- 
ences to authority would have been of more service to the 
sober genealogist than the childish boast that through the 
Gatacre marriage the Middlemores of Birmingham 'trace a 
royal descent ' from Alfred the Great, which ' royal descent ' 
is set out at length in the appendix. We know that probably 
every Englishman in the kingdom has such a * royal descent,' 
and that a tyro in genealogy can fly such a kite for almost 
any postulant with a few generations of pedigree as a starting- 
point. In our day therefore these toys are obsolete and may 
well be left to the popular heraldry book makers whose larger 
public has not yet come to a just estimation of the value of 
their wares. 

The steadfastness in the Roman faith of so many members 
of an English family is somewhat remarkable. The Hawkes- 
low family were of the same mind as their cousins of Edgbas- 
ton, and John Middlemore of Hawkeslow, son of the last 
named William, sent at least two of his sons to Rome for 
their education. William Middlemore, the heir of Hawkes- 
low, appears first in a character sympathetic and familiar 
through the ages, that of the student who finds Latin * very 
difficult,' and he is sent back from Rome, where the difficult 
Latin is deemed so necessary, to England, where he and a 
companion have their bags rummaged as ours are rummaged 
to-day, and in their bags are found many letters from young 
papists abroad, some crucifixes, c a picture of Maire Mawdlyn 
holowed and certain other tryffles.' Young William came 



40 THE ANCESTOR 

home to a house burdened with the fines and exactions which 
made the life of the recusant a hard one. Two-thirds of 
Hawkeslow are leased over his father's head by the Crown 
to his uncle Henry, who seems to have been a prudent 
conformist. William of the bad Latin married twice, and 
lived the secluded life of a recusant, making no history for the 
Middlemores beyond his disputes in his old age with his dis- 
honest housekeeper. With his son John the fortunes of the 
family set downhill, and John dies in Worcester gaol after six 
years in that sad lodging, having bred up thirteen young re- 
cusants to follow him. The four daughters do not marry, 
and the eight younger sons leave no issue beyond the second 
generation. William the heir lives through the civil war, 
which comes drumming and trumpeting to his own door. 
Hawkeslow is garrisoned for the Parliament with sixty foot 
and above forty horse, who make a stout fight against Prince 
Rupert's men, and surrender at last when Charles himself 
rides to the leaguer. The defenders have good terms made 
with them, but the Middlemore house of Hawkeslow pays for 
its hour of dangerous fame, being pillaged and burned by 
Lord Astley before the war moves on. 

About this time a significant note appears amongst the 
Middlemore evidences. They cease to style themselves 
' esquire,' and take their places amongst the ' gentlemen.' 
They are still outside the national faith, and on King George's 
coming they appear amongst those who refuse to take the 
prescribed oaths. Soon after this they conform, but too late, 
and the conformity of Middlemore of Hawkeslow is but a 
village happening. In 1724 John Middlemore of Hawkesley, 
as Hawkeslow is then spelled, is plain yeoman, a man whose 
condition cannot be described as that of a gentleman, and 
yeoman and less the family continues to write itself, despite 
the handbooks which make clear to us that gentleman is the 
true rank for him whose arms are ' on record,' even though 
he lack shirt and boots. By the beginning of the nineteenth 
century Middlemore of Hawkesley is described in a history of 
Birmingham as 'the setting glympse of a shining family,' 
whose estate is, ' exclusive of a few peppercorns and red roses 
long since withered, reduced to one little farm, tilled for bread 
by the owner.' Richard Middlemore is the last of Hawkes- 
ley. He lives a farmer and yeoman, but is buried as esquire 
in 1831, and two of his three daughters survive to sell 



FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 41 

Hawkesley to a kinsman whose prosperity has risen as theirs 
waned. His brothers marry and beget children, but there are 
no more shields of arms to set in Mr. Phillimore's broad 
margins. The Middlemores are now maltsters and innholders, 
private soldiers of the line and shellbacks under the red en- 
sign. 

For the saving of the name from the place of forgotten 
things we look to a younger son of George Middlemore of 
Hawkesley, who died in 1727. This brother of the first 
yeoman in the pedigree is Robert Middlemore, who goes to 
work as a bridle cutter in Birmingham, and brings new blood 
to his impoverished stock by marrying with Barbara Amer- 
ongen, probably the daughter of Justanus Amerongen, a 
Birmingham button maker from the low countries, by whom 
he has ten children and more, of whom the eldest, George 
Middlemore, conforms to the National Church. He is a 
bridle cutter as his father was, and removes to Walsall, where 
the saddlery trade has its centre. With John his son bridle- 
cutting is no longer a good trade, and he disappears into 
London, where he dies in poor obscurity at some unknown 
date in the early nineteenth century. Then at last the luck 
turns. John's son Richard, born at Stratford-on-Avon in 
1778, founds in Birmingham, as a young man of twenty-three, 
a business which has now prospered for nearly a century. 
Bridle-cutting and accoutrement making bring government 
contracts for leather work, and the story of the firm of 
Middlemore & Sons carries us to the time when cycle acces- 
sories take the place of much bridle cutting. 

In 1869 the grandson of Richard Middlemore is able to 
write himself Middlemore of Hawkesley, having bought the 
last of the old estate from the two old maiden ladies into 
whose hands it had descended, and soon afterwards his son, 
now lord of four islands in far away Orkney, begins the collec- 
tion of the materials for that history of his ancestors which 
has come to such an excellent ending in the hand of Mr. 
Phillimore. 

The newer novelists are beginning to see the human 
interest which follows the winner in the cockpit of trade, and 
in the buying back of the ancient seat of Hawkesley we have 
a last chapter which would reconcile the story of Middlemore 
and Sons to the romancer in the older manner. 

Whilst applauding Mr. Phillimore's work and giving it its 



42 THE ANCESTOR 

due place as one of the most accurate as well as one of the 
handsomest of English family histories, a few points remain 
for criticism. Some of these points have regard to technical 
detail, and in pressing these we remember that the author of 
the well-known manual How to Write the History of a Family 
invites closer criticism than a lesser writer. We may instance 
the recurrent and very irritating fact of the uncertainty attach- 
ing to many of the dates given. It is well known that the 
old civil year of the records began on 25 March, and the 
device of the ' double date ' is used by genealogists for avoid- 
ing confusion between dates following the ancient method 
and the modern historical year. Mr. Phillimore in this matter 
has no method. A notable example occurs on page 107, 
which has extracts from a parish register. Here we have 
Henry Middlemore, christened '13 Feb. i6i|,' followed by 
Cicely Middlemore, buried ' 10 Jan. 1616.' The date of 
Henry's christening is therefore accurately stated, but Cicely's 
burial may have taken place according to our modern reckon- 
ing, for all Mr. Phillimore helps us, either in 1616 or 1617. 
When Richard Middlemore dies on * 1 6 Feb. 1 503,' we have 
again two years to choose from, and as the double date only 
affects days from i Jan. to 24 March we cannot explain the 
date (on page 183) of 7 May 163!. 

More serious criticism than this is aroused by Mr. Philli- 
more's treatment of the earlier generations of the family. As 
the author assures us that nineteen generations of the family 
are now on record at the College of Arms, we are forced to 
believe that the veneration for official sanction in the matters 
of genealogy and armory has not allowed him to question 
the earlier generations even when his evidence to support 
them is of the slightest. Genealogists are learning that hardly 
any research can be undertaken in the early history of ancient 
families without injury to the ricketty fabrics of the pedigrees 
compiled in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The 
new wine cannot be poured into old bottles. These apochry- 
pha of our forefathers may be read for edification of a varied 
kind, but we must oppose with a will any attempt to make of 
them a canon of inspired genealogy. Let us take the first 
three generations of Middlemore as a text. 

John of Middlemore is the patriarch from whom rises the 
family tree. For his existence there is evidence enough. A 
John Middlemore is found in Studley and Solihull in 1327. 



FORTUNES OF A MIDLAND HOUSE 43 

A John Middlemore, and possibly the same John, is engaged 
in affairs of the law from 1332 to 1343. A John Middlemore 
in 1343, as son and heir of another John Middlemore, makes 
a release of lands in Solihull and Tanworth which he held by 
grant of Lettice his mother. Here we have, as it seems, 
father, mother and son. 

But the second Middlemore of Mr. Phillimore's pedigree 
is one Henry Middlemore, and we search in vain for any 
evidence which should make him son of John. Mr. Philli- 
more styles him ' of Mapleborough ' because Dugdale remarks 
that the Middlemores were formerly of that place. A Henry 
Middlemore was an attorney tor a Beauchamp in 1365 and 
appears again in 1368. But who he was and where he dwelt 
are unknown, and we may ask why he should be placed where 
he is in the Middlemore pedigree without a dotted line or 
other indication of doubt. Three Middlemores at least were 
living in this neighbourhood in the first half of the fourteenth 
century, from any one of whom he might descend. And 
while demanding the reason for the decision that Henry must 
needs be son of John, whose only known son is another John, 
we may ask why Henry is selected as father for Thomas 
Middlemore, the first undoubted ancestor of Middlemore of 
Edgbaston. Here again there is not a button's worth of 
evidence for the connecting line, and nothing in the arrange- 
ment of the genealogy is allowed to show us that Mr. 
Phillimore regards the occurrence of two names in a pedigree 
made three hundred years away from the facts as having any 
less weight than his carefully arranged evidences from inquests 
and wills. 

It is curious to see how little proof we have of the great 
Middlemore match with Isabel, the heir of Edgbaston of 
Edgbaston. That he married one Isabel, who brought him 
the manor of Edgbaston, is certain, by reason that Richard 
Clodeshall, her second husband, entered upon the manor 
after her death by the courtesy of England. But Isabel's 
surname is only a name in a pedigree. The pedigree of the 
Edgbastons as deduced from records gives no such lady, and 
again we ask Mr. Phillimore for proofs. Much is made of 
the fact that a shield of arms formerly in the glass of Edg- 
baston church is assigned by Dugdale to the family of 
Edgbaston and that the same shield was there found quartered 
by Middlemore. But the glass seems to have been set up at 



44 THE ANCESTOR 

the end of the fifteenth century, as it has also the shield of 
Middlemore impaling Throckmorton, and although an Edg- 
baston may well have borne such a shield, apparently founded 
on that of Birmingham, we find no evidence for it. Indeed 
there is something of evidence against it, for it was suggested 
by Dugdale that the father of Isabel was son of Richard 
Edgbaston of Swinford in Leicestershire, and Mr. Phillimore 
does not note that the arms of this family of Edgbaston, in 
the only shield of Edgbaston known to students of ancient 
armory, do not even distantly resemble this quartering of 
Middlemore. In view of all these doubts we may again point 
out that the family for whom this record was compiled, though 
doubtless having some degree of kinship with the old Middle- 
mores of Edgbaston, are here connected with that line by two 
generations who only exist for us as names in a heraldic manu- 
script compiled at a period at which we are taught by experi- 
ence to look for carelessness and fraud. 

These things apart, and we are not disposed to lessen their 
importance, Mr. Phillimore is to be congratulated on seeing 
his labours come to so handsome an end. If the Middlemore 
line goes on, and having read its interesting story we may 
say floreat domus, this book will remain their best heirloom, 
as it is for their dead and gone forefathers a worthy monu- 
ment. 

O. B. 



THE FAMILIES OF THE STRANGERS 
THE COSTEBADIES 

THE cessation of civil strife which followed the accession 
of Henry of Navarre to the throne of France brought 
great changes in French social life. The increase in the trade 
and prosperity of the country brought into existence a power- 
ful middle class ; while the religious struggles had to some ex- 
tent, especially in the south, broken down the feudal barriers 
of rank between the Protestant nobility and middle classes ; 
the former had formed alliances, at all events in the younger 
branches, with the powerful bourgeoisie, which constituted a 
lesser nobility. 

To this petite noblesse the family of Costebadie belonged, 
and, as in the case of the Barons and the Vandeputs, the 
cause of the emigration of the English branch was its associa- 
tion with c the religion ' feglise prttendue reformee. 

I. The recorded pedigree begins with JEAN DE COSTEBADIE, 
who in 1581 was one of the 'bourgeois ' of Tonneins in the 
Agenais, at that time a title of honour and a mark of distinc- 
tion conferred by a town for protection or other service ren- 
dered to it by a noble. He was also one of the four ' consuls' 
of the town. 

He died before 1621, as appears by a proces dated 
31 January, 1 1621, against his widow, Marie Bonis, by whom 
he left six children. 

i. Jean de Costebadie, a Protestant minister, who left one 

son Cirus, avocat. Wife unknown. 

ii. Jean de Costebadie, sieur de Tulle, secretary to the 
Due de Candalle (1660-5). He married Jeanne 
Vallois, who appears as godmother to one Abraham 
Costebadie de Bazats, son of Frangois and Anne de 
Bazats, 3 baptized 1 8 January, 1 647, by Maitre Costa- 
badie. 
iii. Jean Jacques de Costebadie, or Jacob, as he is called in 

1 Archives de Lot tt Garonne, A gen. B. 775. 
a Ibid. E. Supplement, 2357 (G. G. 30). 

45 r> 



46 THE ANCESTOR 

the marriage settlement of his son Jean. Of whom 
later, 
iv. Francois de Costebadie, who died in 1 66 1, leaving one 

daughter by his wife Marie Baucon. 
i. D. Jeanne de Costebadie. 

ii. D. Marie de Costebadie, wife of Pierre de Vauze, 
whose daughter Marie married a Protestant 
minister, Abraham Galline, d.s.p. 

II. JEAN JACQUES, or JACOB, DE COSTEBADIE, was born circ. 
1590 at Tonneins, one of the centres of the 'religion ' in the 
Agenais. He became a Protestant minister, but is chiefly 
distinguished by his literary works, being known as ' The 
Poet of the Agenais.' The only work which has been pre- 
served however is a collection of epigrams entitled, Johannis 
Costebadii Aquitani Epigrammaticum. Libri Octo. Salmurii. 
Is. Desbordes, I854. 1 410. Dedicated to the senate, political, 
ecclesiastical and academical, of Bale. The style appears to 
have been modelled on that of Owen ; perhaps the only passage 
of any real value is that describing the course of the Garonne, 
p. 139. In the Cbronique des Eglises Reformees de V Agenais 
(Toulouse, 1870. I2mo) Alphonse Lagarde has reprinted 
the xxxi. epigram on the burning of Tonneins in 1622. La 
Franc de Perpignan wrote a curious and interesting letter 
28 May, 1744, on Jacob de Costebadie (CEuvres diverses, ed. 3, 
1753, 3 vols. i2mo, p. 282), since reprinted by M. Tamizey 
de Larroque in vol. xi. Revue de it Aquitaine. 

He also left two printed sermons, published at Charenton, 
1642, 8vo. 

Jean Jacques de Costebadie was educated 2 at the Univer- 
sity of Montauban, and afterwards at Geneva, where his entry 
is recorded, ' J. Costebadius Thoneinensius, Nov. 4, 1614.' 

His first pastorate was at La Brede, from which place he 
removed to Salinde. He was appointed to Clairac in 1 634, 
where he remained till 1661, when he received his discharge, 
owing to age and infirmities, and died in 1674. 

[NOTE. There is some doubt as to whether he removed 
to Clairac till 1655 ; if so, the Maitre Costabadie, minister 
there in 1647, was probably his eldest brother.] 

By his wife Marie Braunes, daughter of Daniel Braunes 
and Anne Roi, he left five children. 

1 La France Protestante, Jiang, iv. 73. 2 Ibid. iv. 73. 



THE FAMILIES OF THE STRANGERS 47 

i. Jean de Costebadie, emigrated to England in 1684. 
ii. A second Jean de Costebadie, mentioned in his elder 
brother's marriage contract as 'Jean puisnay,' d.s.p. 
1715. He left a will in favour of his sister Anne, 
with reversion to his brother Jean, if ever he should 
return to France (drawn and signed by Lebon. W. 
Royal). 

i. D. Jeanne, whose marriage certificate, dated 2 Novem- 
ber, 1676,* with Jean Costes, merchant, of Bor- 
deaux, describes her as ' Jehanne de Costebadie, 
damoiselle, fille de feu sieur Jacob Costebadie, 
bourgeois, et de Braune, damoiselle.' 
ii. D. Marie de Costebadie, wife of Jean Coutry or 
Courtois, apothecary, of Bordeaux. She is prob- 
ably the Marie Costebadie, who is mentioned in 
Hozier's MS. collection (Bib. Nat. Paris) as being 
the widow of N ... Courtoide, bourgois de la 
Ville Bordeaux. The coat attributed to her 
is a wonderful example of the armory of the 
French bourgeoisie. It has a bird, three cypress 
trees, a heart and darts, a crescent, two carp in a 
river, and other matters, but it bears no resem- 
blance to that borne by her family, with the 
exception of the 3 stars which are shown here 
as gold upon an azure chief, 
iii. D. Anne de Costebadie, wife of Jean du Vigneau, 

surgeon, of Bordeaux. 

III. JEAN DE COSTEBADIE was born at Tonneins, and 
finished his education at Geneva 15 October, 1668. In the same 
year he was accepted for the ministry by the Synod of Basse- 
Guyenne, 3 held at Montpazier, and ordained by the laying on 
of hands by M. Garisolles, minister of Castelmoron, 1 1 Nov. 
i668. 3 He was sent to Argentat to prepare for the office of 
pastor, and became minister of the Protestant congregation 
there, where he remained till 1683, when he removed to 
Beaumont, in Perigord. 

His wife, whom he married 12 February, 1673, at Argentat, 

1 Registre <te Fetal-civil Protestant (Tonneins), E. Supplement, 2357 (G. G. 
* La France Pntestante, Haag. iv. 73. 

3 Reg. dt PEtat civil Pntestante Archives de Lot et Garonne (Tonneins) E. 
Supplement 2357 (G. G. 30). Imposition des mains par M. Garisolles, 
ministre de Castelmoron sur M. Costabadie. 



48 THE ANCESTOR 

was Damoiselle Jeanne d'Echaunies, or de Chaunies, daughter of 
Pierre, Seigneur d'Echaunies and Anne de Greil, widow of 
Betut, ecuyer, Seigneur de Nonars, whom she had married be- 
fore she was 18. The family de Greil was from the Auvergne. 
His marriage contract describes him as ' ministre de 
1'eglise pretendue reformee de la presente ville, fils naturel et 
legitime de sieur Jacob de Costebadie, et de damoiselle Marie 
Braunes, habitans de Tonneins-Desoubs, en Agennois.' His 
father being infirm, his place was taken by Jean de Costebadie 
(puisnay) who acted as ' procureur ' for his father, in the mar- 
riage settlements. Considerable sums of money were settled 
by both parties, his wife brought him a dowry of 5000 livres 
from her father's side and 3000 from her mother's. Among 
the articles of furniture included in the settlement were ' un lit 
de serge de Seigneur vert avec la couverture trainante, le tout 
garni de frange de soie, et de linge a sa discreption.' 

The marriage took place 'dans la maison de demoiselle 
Anne de Greil, , veuve de Sieur Pierre Chaunies (sic) en la ville 
d'Argentat, Bas-Limousin, Viscomte de Turenne.' 1 

They left seven children, of whom only five are recorded. 
i. Pierre de Costebadie, who travelled in Italy, Germany 
and Turkey, and who was killed in action in the army 
of William III. in the Low Countries, 
ii. Jean Jacques de Costebadie who became a naturalized 

Englishman, ancestor of the English branch. 

iii. Jean Gril or Greil de Costebadie, not mentioned in the 

French pedigree, but whose marriage is recorded in 

the registers of the French Church in Spring Gardens, 

to Mary Guillot, 6 July, 1710 (Jean Gril Coste Badie). 

i. D. Jeanne de Costebadie, wife of . . . de Martret, 

Sieur de Betut ; born 1681. 

ii. D. Lucie de Costebadie, who died in 1769 at a great 
age at Argentat. Like her sister Jeanne, she 
was left in France, and brought up as a Catholic. 
According to a pedigree in the possession of 
Dr. Morelly of Argentat, she had some romantic 
adventures, and died possessed of great riches. 
For many years she carried on a lawsuit against 
her cousin Anne d'Echaunie. 
According to M. Tamizey de Larroque, Jean de Coste- 

1 Archives de Lot et Garonne, B. 83, fol. 215 and 214 V. 



THE FAMILIES OF THE STRANGERS 49 

badie left France in 1684, the year before the actual Revo- 
cation, taking with him two of his children, and leaving his 
wife and five others in France. He settled at York in 1686. 
In 1704 we find them in London, their names being on the 
list of refugees assisted by the English government (Jean Cos- 
tebadie, sa femme et quatre enrants). The tradition is that 
both he and his wife made several journeys to France on 
their children's account between 1684 and 1688, and it is 
possible that the youngest were taken back from England 
to their native land and relations. 

IV. JEAN JACQUES, or JACOB, COSTEBADIE was born i at Argen- 
tat in 1684, the year of his father's exile, and was brought to 
England in 1686. He was naturalized 5 Anne. He held 
the Stamp Office at York for some years, and was a proctor 
in the Ecclesiastical Court. His death took place in 1758, 
and he was buried 3 1 October at St. Michael le Belfrey's, 
York, in an altar tomb in the churchyard to the east of the 
church, and a monument to his memory within the church 
records several charities left by him. He married Rebecca 
Robinson, daughter of Humphrey Robinson of Thicket 
Priory, an ancient Yorkshire family, son of Richard Robinson 
of Thicket and Jane Akroyd, second daughter and coheiress 
of John Akroyd of Foggathorpe, who died in 1670, and who 
was great-great-grandson of Edward Akroyd, eldest brother of 
William Akroyd, M.A., priest at the altar of the B.V. Mary 
at York, and rector of Marston. By his will dated 12 Sep- 
tember, 1518, William Akroyd left his lands to keep 'one 
scholar at Cambridge or Oxford to the end of the world,' and 
ordained that such scholars should be of kindred to him in 
blood of his name, Akroyd, or in default, one near to him in 
blood of another name. Cardinal Wolsey was executor to 
this will. 

By his wife Rebecca, Jacob Costebadie left three children : 
i. Jacob Costebadie, who continues the line, 
ii. Henry Costebadie, commander R.N. d.s.p. at Acomb 

near York, aged 8 1 . 

i. D. Rebecca Costebadie married John Clough of York 
and Newbold Hall, proctor and banker, and left 
issue two sons and three daughters, of whom the 
youngest daughter Harriet married the Rev. 
Francis Metcalfe, M.A., rector of Kirkbride, 
Cumberland, and patron of the living. 



5 o THE ANCESTOR 

V. JACOB COSTEBADIE was born in 1724, and baptized at the 
church of St. Michael le Belfry, York, 3 March, 1724-5. He 
was appointed to the Akroyd Exhibition, being of founder's 
kin, and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. He was 
rector of Wensley for fifty-three years, 1750-1802, where he 
died aged 78. His altar tomb is in the churchyard to the east 
of the chancel. By his wife, a Miss Rutter of Houghton-le- 
Spring, he left two children : 

i. Jacob Costebadie. 

i. D. Anne Costebadie, married the Rev. Thomas Lund, 
rector of Barton. 

VI. JACOB COSTEBADIE (or Costobadie) was born in 1758, 
and was appointed to the Akroyd Exhibition in 1775, being 
of founder's kin. He succeeded his father as rector of Wens- 
ley in 1802, and held the living for twenty-six years, until his 
death in 1828, 8 November. Previously to becoming rector 
of Wensley he held the college living of Graveley, Cambs ; 
and was fellow and tutor of his college. 

He married July, 1796, Anne, daughter of the Rev. Dr. 
Milnes of Newark, by whom he left eleven children. 

i. Henry Palliser Costobadie of West Barton in Bishops- 
dale, curate of Wensley and rector of Husbands Bos- 
worth, Leicestershire. He married Louisa, daughter 
of Samuel Judd of Stamford Baron, by whom he left 
three sons : (i.) Clermont Hugh Costobadie, Captain 
3rd D. Guards, died in India ; (ii.) Henry, died 
young ; (iii.) Henry Holmes Costobadie, Lt.-Col. 
R.H.A. of the Hermitage, Stamford Baron, who 
married Gertrude Elise Lucas, youngest daughter of 
George Vere Braithwaite of Edith Weston Hall, 
Rutland ; and three daughters : 

i. D. Caroline Laetitia (Minna) wife of Captain 

Nelson Thomas. 

ii. D. Henrietta Louisa (Lily) died abroad, 
iii. D. Charlotte Kate, wife of James Sullivan Bowdoin 

Boston, Mass. 

ii. Hugh Palliser Costobadie, vicar of King's Norton, Leices- 
tershire. He was appointed to the Akroyd Scholarship 
2 August, 1822, which he held for three-and-a-half 
years. Died 28 March, 1887, and was buried at 
King's Norton. By his wife Fanny Burnett, daughter 
of the Rev. Frederick Lateward, rector of Perivale, 



THE FAMILIES OF THE STRANGERS 51 

Middlesex ; he left (i.) Akroyd Palliser Costobadie ; 
born 6 August, 1853 ; married in 1887 to Mary 
Ann Stevens, of New Zealand, (ii.) Frederick Pal- 
liser de Costebadie ; born 9 August, 1856 ; married 
20 September, 1881, Mary Laetitia, daughter of Rev. 
James Beauchamp, rector of Crowell, Oxon. (iii.) 
John Palliser Costobadie ; born 18 December, 1858. 

i. D. Fanny; born 17 August, 1864. 
iii. Akroyd Costobadie of Thornton Rust, Wensleydale ; 

born 1805 ; married Miss Chapman, 
iv. George Costobadie. 

v. Charles Costobadie; born 1811 ; died 5 June, 1867, 
aged 56 ; 5151 Regt. ; buried at Wensley ; married 
a daughter of General Currie. 

vi. James Costobadie, major in the army 1852 ; married 
Laura, youngest daughter of John Kingston, Com- 
missioner of H.M. Stamp Office, by whom he left 
(i.) William, born in 1855, a civil engineer, married 
his cousin Mary, daughter of Stafford Hotchkin of 
Woodhall, Lines. (ii.) Harry, born 1857. (iii.) 
Gerald, born 1864, Major, Loyal N. Lanes. Regt. 
i. D. Isabel, born 1859; married Major Cuffe- 

Wheeler, R.N. 

vii. William Costobadie, born 1814, died 1832, Lieut. R.N. 

i. D. Elizabeth Anne, wife of Thomas Grubbe 

(married 21 June, 1821), of Eastwell Hall, 

Devizes ; born at Gravely 14 April, 1801. 

ii. D. Mary, born at sea ; married Richard Lucas of 

Edith Weston, Rutland, 
iii. D. Charlotte, married John Humphrey of Kib- 

worth Hall, Leicestershire, 
iv. D. Fanny, died in 1878. 

The family possess among other heirlooms, an iron seal 
with the arms as borne two cheverons with three stars in the 
chief and a lion rampant in the foot. Crest, a church on a 
rock, in allusion to the name (Coste = a. hill; abadie = i church. 
Langue d'oc). Motto : ' In hoc saxo templum aedificabo." 
A gold and sapphire ring, and a Genoese gold coin weighing 
8 gr., 2 inches in diameter, bearing the inscription (obverse), 
DUX ET GUBERNATORES REIP GEN+ (reverse) ET REGE 

EOS 1641 9 Ses. which were bequeathed by Jean de Coste- 
badie with the proviso that they were not to be parted with 
except in dire necessity. 



52 THE ANCESTOR 

[NOTE A. The family of Judd of Stamford Baron descends 
from a brother of Sir Andrew Judd, Lord Mayor of London 
temp. Elizabeth, who built and endowed schools at Tunbridge 
Wells.] 

[NOTE B. The Hermitage, Stamford Baron, was formerly 
a priory, and known as 'The House of the Holy Sepulchre.' 
It is a very ancient building, and contains a chapel of St. Mary 
Magdalene. It was used as a resting place by Crusaders 
coming from the north. King Richard III. when Duke of 
Gloster stayed in it during the wars of the Roses, and the 
room occupied by him is known as King Richard's room. 

Stamford Baron, Northants, now absorbed by Stamford 
town, on the Lincolnshire side of the Welland, was built 
and fortified by Edward the Elder (901-25) as a protection 
against the Danish inroads.] 

CHAS. E. LART. 



THE VANDEPUTS 

The following notes may be added to the Vandeput pedi- 
gree printed in the fourth number of the Ancestor. The will 
of a hitherto unknown brother of Giles Vandeput lends 
colour to the belief that the father of Giles was himself an 
emigrant. It will be seen that this Peter, naming his late wife 
by her surname in the continental manner, suggests to us that 
he and his brother married two sisters of the family of Jaupin 
of Ypres, although the name Jaupin is here wrongly written 
Janpin. The additional entries of the parish register of St. 
Olave's, Hart Street, supply, some valuable dates. 

PARISH REGISTER OF ST. OLAVE IN HART STREET, LONDON 

1 66 1 Feb. 7. Peter Vandeput, merchant, esq., buried in the Chancel 
of St. Margaret Pattens. 

1674 Aug. 3. Peter Vandeput of St. Michael Royal married Margaret 
Buckworth of this parish. 

1717 April 30. Robert Holford of Lincoln's Inn bachelor married Sarah 
Vandeput of Richmond. 

THE WILL OF PETER VANDE PUT, TRANSLATED OUT OF DUTCH 

I desire the will of my wife Jeane Janpin, dated 10 Nov. 1629 and made 
in London to be performed 

To the poor of the Dutch Church 5<3/ 
Maid serv' Elizabeth Faucker ;/ 



THE FAMILIES OF THE STRANGERS 53 

Residue to be disposed of by Nicholas Macquelyn ' as I have charged by 
worde of mouthc ' 

And this I have soe caused to be wrytten and have subscribed the same 
with my hand accordinge to the weakenes thereof by reason of the hurtc 
whiche latelie happened unto me at Orsett in the Countye of Essex 

Witness : Edward de Pleurs 

Dated 17 June 1630 

I Peter Giles vande Putt doe alsoe testifie that Peter vande Putt my unckle 
declared thus to be his last will 

Admon. with will annexed granted 13 Jan. 163^10 Giles vande Putt, 
brother of the said Peter, the exor. named in the will renouncing. [P.C.C. 
8 St. John'] 



54 



THE ANCESTOR 



THE DEATH OF THOMAS, THIRD EARL 

OF ROCKINGHAM, AND THE MONSON- 
WATSON SUCCESSION TO HIS ESTATES 

LEWIS, first Earl of Rockingham, married Katharine, 
second daughter of Sir George Sondes of Lees Court, 
co. Kent, and had by her three sons, Edward Viscount Sondes 
and the Honourables George and William Watson, and four 
daughters, the Ladies Mary, Katherine, Arabella and Margaret 
Watson. For the purpose of this article we need to notice 
the fortunes of the families of the eldest son and of the 
youngest daughter only. 

Edward, Viscount Sondes, married Lady Katherine Tufton, 
eldest daughter of the Earl of Thanet, and, dying before his 
father left three sons, Lewis and Thomas who each succeeded 
to the earldom and Edward who died unmarried, and one 
daughter, Katherine, who married the Right Honourable 
Edward Southwell of King's Weston, co. Gloucester. 

As neither Earl Lewis nor Earl Thomas left issue it was 
naturally supposed that their sister, the Hon. Katherine 
Southwell, would succeed to the estates ; but, as will be seen 
below, the terms of the will of Earl Thomas came as a 
complete surprise to the whole family. 

The first Earl of Rockingham's youngest daughter, Lady 
Margaret Watson, married Sir John Monson, first Baron 
Monson of Burton, co. Lincoln, and to their second son, the 
Hon. Lewis Monson, the estates were found to be bequeathed, 
on condition that he took the name of Watson. 

Amongst the family papers in Rockingham Castle is a 
parchment bound MS. volume, containing pedigrees of the 
' Viponts, Barons of Westmorland ; of the Barony of 
Vesci ; of the Cliffords ; of Katherine, Countess of Thanet ; 
and of the Family of Watson, Barons and Earls of Rock- 
ingham.' 'The Death of Edward Watson, third son of 
Viscount Sondes, and the disposal of his property amongst his 
brothers and sister.' ' Henry Earl of Cumberland, and his 
descendants.' 'The Wills of Thomas, Earl of Thanet, of 



THE MONSON- WATSON SUCCESSION 55 

Lewis, Earl of Rockingham, and of Thomas, Earl of 
Rockingham.' 'A Copy of the Account of Thomas, 
Earl of Thanet's Income and Expenditure for 40 years,' 
and the ' Rental of the Rockingham Estate ' with various 
grants, and ' A Statement of How and Why the Family 
and Posterity of Mrs. Katherine Southwell came to be 
Disinherited from all the Great Estate of Her Father's 
Family' ; with an account of the death of Thomas, third (and 
last) Earl of Rockingham. 

By the kind permission of the Rev. Wentworth Watson 
of Rockingham Castle, this last paper, which gives a graphic 
description of the death of the last (in the direct male line) 
of the elder branch of the Rockingham Watsons, is now 
placed before the readers of the Ancestor. 

It is very Natural to Imagine & to Foresee, that Mrs. Katherine South- 
well's own Family & Posterity may have the Curiosity to Enquire How & 
Why She came to be Disinherited from all the Great Estate of Her Father's 
Family to which She was the next a Kin, & the only Surviving Heir. 

What were Thomas Earl of Rockinghams secret Reasons & Motives for 
such an Unexpected and Undeserved a Disposition, the Day of judgment 
can alone Reveal & Discover ; for He always express'd an Affection for His 
Sister, commended Her Person, Her Temper & Her Conduct & yet in His 
Will he never mention'd her Name, but made Lewis Monson, 2 d Son to his 
Fathers Sister, Heir to all His Real & Personal Estate, & then George Monson 
the 3 d Son, in case of Lewis's Death, in prejudice to His own Sister Katherine 
Southwell & to Her Son & Daughter. 

Earl Lewis left Mrs. Southwell 1000 Legacy by Will and there seem'd 
to be a reason for His not Entailing His Estate, & for his Leaving it abso- 
lutely in his Brother Thomas's Power, because He charged it with His 
Mortgages & Bond Debts which amounted to about 40,000. 

Thomas Earl of Rockingham born 30 Deer. 1725 succeeded His Brother 
Lewis on 4 December [quaer : November*] 1743 in His Earldom & Real 
Estate, and felt a sincere and Unaffected Concern for His Death. 

At Christmas 1745 He went to Lees Court in Kent. In February 
174^ He went to Rockingham Castle in Northampton Shire w th Mr. 
Lewison Eldest Son to Lord Gowcr. The Weather proved too bad for 
Country Sports & favourable alone for Hard Drinking, particularly on 
Monday I7th Feb"., when his Company Supt & Lay there. 

1 8 Feb : Earl Thomas seemed Remarkably better then (sic) all his Bottle 
Companions, but began to Complain at night. 

19 feb. He came down to Breakfast, but was not able to go out a 
Shooting : He came down again to Dinner, but eat little, & went up to Bed. 

20 feb. He continued ill but wou'd not own it in his Letters, & the fol- 
lowing is a Copy of a Letter He wrote to Mr. Southwell, in answer to two 
Letters from Mr. Southwell upon the then Changes & the Changes of the 
Ministry ; which Letter is here Inserted, as a proof of the Friendship then 



56 THE MONSON-WATSON SUCCESSION 

Subsisting between them, & that neither Mr. Southwell nor His Wife had 
given Earl Thomas the least Cause of Offense or of Coolness. 

'. Rockingham Castle, Feb. 20. 
4 Dear S r 

' I received last Week the favour of Both y r Letters & return You many 
thanks for being so Good as to let me hear from You a little what was doing 
w"* both greatly Surpm'd me, however as I am in no Secrets can form very 
little judgment of so new & unheard of Step. 

' At length the Thaw is come & I'm in great hopes of getting out a 
Hunting soon, as you are no Sportsman, it can be of no further Diversion to 
You to hear it, then that I am sure of, You wish me Diversion. 
'I beg my best Love to my Sister & Sincerely am D r S r 

' Your affec' Brother 

& obedient humble Serv' 

' ROCKINGHAM.' 

Earl Thomas continuing ill on Thursday 20 Feb y Dr. Wallis the Physitian 
was sent for from Stamford, who came that Evening. 

Feb. 21. On Friday morning Earl Thomas shews Dr. Wallis some spots 
on his Face, & asks if they were not the Small Pox, which Dr. Wallis owns 
to him. 

Earl Thomas orders Mr. Seddon His Household Steward to write advice 
hereof to Lord Monson by Express, & to desire Him to acquaint Mr. & 
Mrs. Southwell, & to send down Mr. Thomas Graham Apothecary. 

Earl Thomas asks Mr. Wetherell His Land Steward for the Form of a 
Will, who confesses his Ignorance but desires my Lord to send for Mr. 
Farrer a Lawyer who kept His Courts, & was put in by Lady Sondes, & who 
knew & respected the Family, but He unhappily had not had the Small Pox 
and therefore Excused Himself from coming. 

Lord Monson rec d Mr. Seddons Letter at Midnight & sends it to Mr. & 
Mrs. Southwell & They prevail on Lord Monson to go down next morning 
with Mr. Graham. 

22 Feb. On Saturday Earl Thomas sends for Mr. Charles Allicocke, a 
Young Lawyer in the Neighbourhood who came to His Bedside & by His 
Express order drew His Will & perfected it in the form He prescribed. He 
mentioned to my Lord the usual manner of naming Trustees, but his answer 
was, He wou'd have no Trustees ; He seemed much Dejected, but he bid Mr. 
Allicocke make Hast, never once mentioning His having a Sister nor Her 
Husband. Mr. Allicocke declares He did not then know my Lord had a 
Sister, & that when my Lord named the Legacy of 5000 to His Neice & 
God Daughter Katherine Southwell, He asked my Lord how to spell the 
name Southwell, & He spelt it to him. 

When the Will was perfected and Witnessed, He left it with my Lord 
& went down Stairs to Dinner. 

In an hour & an half's time, Earl Thomas sends again for Mr. Allicocke, 
& tells him, He found the Christened Name of one of the Legatees mistaken 
& their place of Abode & wou'd have it rectified, & upon the whole, my 
Lord chuses to have the Will new drawn, perfected Sc witnessed, & it was ac- 
cordingly done. 

23 Feb. Lord Monson and Mr. Graham arrive in the afternoon, Earl 



THE MONSON-WATSON SUCCESSION 57 

Thomas seems glad to see him but never mentions to Lord Monson His 
having made his Will. They find the Earl very ill & send Express to Mr. 
Southwell for another Physitian & He dispatches Dr. Shaw on Monday 
morning. 

4 feb. Mrs. Southwell sets out on Sunday w th L Monson & they 
arrive at Rockingham on Monday at Dinner. Earl Thomas seems pleased 
with his sisters coming, desires Immediately to see His poor Sister as He calls 
her, asks her with his usual freedom after Her own and Her Childrens Healths, 
hopes she had caught no cold, that she had not found the Roads bad, & that 
His Hones had met Her. Never mentions His having made a Will, but 
only says, His Illness was a troublesome Affair, and that He hoped it would 
be at the Height on Friday. 

25 feb. On Tuesday morning Mrs. Southwell goes into his room and 
He speaks to her again, but grows light headed in the Evening & calls for 
Pen Ink & Paper without saying Why. 

Feb. 26. On Wednesday afternoon about 6. Earl Thomas dies, and an 
Express is Immediately sent by Lord Monson to Mr. Southwell to come 
down, who declined going before, least as a Brother in Law He might have 
appeared too busy or Officious. 

Lord Monson applied to Mrs. Southwell to open Her Brothers Will a* 
soon as He died, which Her Affliction wou'd not Suffer her to do that night, 
and She wanted for to deferr it till Her Husbands Arrival. 

Feb. 27. But on Thursday morning Lord Monson told Her the Necessity 
of opening the Will & to know what orders Earl Thomas had given about 
His Affairs and His Funeral & that None but Her self cou'd be the Heir & 
give Directions. 

Hereupon Mrs. Southwell desired Mr. Tookey the Parish Minister & the 
Principal Servants might be called in. L d Monson desired Her to break open 
the Will Her Self, which with Agony She submitted to, Mr. Seddon read it, 
& in the first Lines She heard herself absolutely Disinherited & Her Name 
not once Mentioned. 

L d & Lady Monson burst out into Tears at the Surprise of finding their 
2 d Son Lewis the Heir. Mrs. Southwell told them, Since She & her family 
had not the Estate, She wishd theirs joy of it, & drank their Son Lewis's 
Health at dinner. 

They never heard one Murmur nor cou'd perceive one tear drop from her 
Afterwards ; & the only Reflection She has been heard to make upon this 
Unnatural Usage from Her Bro r is, That the Slight was Greater then the 
Loss. 

Copys of the Will were sent Immediately to London & Mrs. Southwell 
had the prudence to send a Copy to Mr. Southwell to meet him at North- 
ampton & to prevent His Surprise ; She Enclosed it in a Letter, w ch She 
shewed to Lord and Lady Monson & then desired them to seal it up, w 04 is 
here Inserted, as a Proof of Her Singular Command of temper under so 
severe a Trial. 

' My Dear. 'Thursday 27 Feb" 

' The Inclosed is a Copy of my poor Brothers Will which I open'd this 

morning in presence of Lord & Lady Monson & all the Upper Servants. 

' You will see by the Date It was made the Day before Lord Monson came 

down, & was witnessed by the Physitian, who knew Him to be perfectly 



58 THE MONSON-WATSON SUCCESSION 

Sensible. I know my Mentioning this is very needless, for You know Lord 
Monson too well & have too good an opinion of Him to Entertain the 
least thought to his Prejudice. But He has said so much to me of his 
Surprise at this Event, that to save You Both the trouble of his Repeating it 
again I thought it best to Write. 

' I am Concerned you have so bad a Day for travelling, & beg You will 
be very Cautious of the Road from Northampton for it is Extremely bad & a 
very Dangerous water at Harington, but by going a little out of the Way, 
they tell me You may avoid it, so Pray Enquire. 

' I did Consult Dr. Shaw as You desired & am pretty Well ; As I shall see 
You soon I will add no more but I am ' Ever Yours 

' K. S.' 

Mr. Southwell set out on Thursday Noon on receiving the Express from 
L d Monson of Earl Thomas's Death & that he had made a will, not yet opened. 
All the Family pronounced Mrs. Southwell the sole Heir ; but Her Husband 
thought it a Hazardous Great Stake to depend on the Stroke of a Pen & 
the Humour of a Gay free Young Man on his Death Bed. 

28 Feb. On Friday Noon Mr. Southwell rec d His Wife's Letter & the 
Copy of the Will at Northampton & got to Rockingham that night. He 
returned Lord and Lady Monson thanks for their Care of his Wife & going 
down with her, & told them Since his wife and family had not the 
Estate, Theirs was the next Wellcome to it, but as it was so great a Stake, In 
justice to His family He must Enquire, to see if Earl Thomas had a power 
to make such a will. 

March l. On Saturday morning Lord Monson set out Post for London 
& Mr. & Mrs. Southwell set out also and got to Town on Monday, 3 March, 
leaving Lady Monson at Rockingham Castle, who stayd there till after Earl 
Thomas's Funeral on Wednesday 1 2 March 1 74!- 

In some time after, Mr. Southwell applied to Lord Monson for the 
Inspection of the Writings &c. of the Rockingham Family, & Lord Monson 
very candidly Entrusted Mr. Southwell with them. 

(Here follows a list of these writings) 

It did appear from a strict Perusal of all these Writings by Mr. Southwells 
Lawyers, That Earl Lewis was Tenant in Tail & also Tenant in fee of all his 
Grandfathers & Grandmothers Estates. 

That He passed fines & Recoveries of all these Estates. 

That He dying without Issue had Power to devise these Estates by Will. 

That He devised them to His Bro' Thomas. 

That Earl Thomas had the same Power & devised them by will to Lewis, 
2 d Son of Lord Monson, & Puttenden Estate bequeathed to him by his 
Uncle. 

Consequently Mrs. Southwell is without Remedy. 

From this Lewis Monson- Watson are descended the family 
of Sondes of Lees Court in Kent, and that of Watson of 
Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire ; the former repre- 
senting the elder, and the latter the younger branch. 

CHAS. WISE. 



THE RISE OF THE POPHAMS 

POPHAM of Popham was a well-known house in medie- 
val Hampshire, the name of which was long preserved 
among our landed families by the Pophams seated at Littlecote 
in the adjoining county of Wilts. But no serious effort has 
been made to trace its origin ; nor, perhaps, was it possible to 
do so till the valuable calendars for which we have reason to 
thank the Public Record Office recently brought to light 
charters which cleared it up. 

These charters were c inspected ' and confirmed by the 
Crown partly for Henry de Popham in 1378 and partly for 
the same Henry in 1401. The first two in order of date are 
those of Henry I., which introduce us to a man whom we may 
term a Treasury clerk, an officer of some importance in that 
bureaucratic reign. He is described as Turstin, clerk to 
William de Pont de 1'Arche, the king's chamberlain, that is to 
say, chamberlain of the exchequer, an office which William 
inherited from Mauduit towards the close of Henry I.'s reign. 1 
Winchester was then the administrative centre for finance as 
for all else, and it was there that Turstin lived, and there that 
Henry I. granted him the two charters in question. 

The first of these grants to Turstin in fee, ' the land of 
Farringdon ' (Ferendon), which he holds of the Bishop of 
Exeter ' and of the honour of the church of Bosham,' to hold 
as a third of a knight's fee, as restored and granted to him by 
William, Bishop of Exeter (i 107-3 y). 2 This charter, which 

1 Sec my article on ' Mauduit of Hartley Mauduit ' (Ancestor, v. 208). 

a ' H. rex Anglorum Henrico Wintoniensi episcopo et justiciariis et vice- 
comitibus et omnibus baronibus et fidelibus suis Francigenis et Anglicis de 
Hamtescira et omnibus de honore ecclesie de Boseham salutem, Sciatis me con- 
cessisse Turstino clerico Willelmi de Pontearch camerarii mei terram de 
Ferendon quam tenet de episcopo Exonie et de honore ecclesie de Boseham 
in feodum et hereditatem . . . per servicium tertie partis unius militis sicut 
Willelmus episcopus Exonie illam ei reddidit et concessit per cartham suam . . . 
Testibus ; Gfaufrido] councellario et Roberto de Curcy et Willelmo de Albini 
Britone, apud Wintoniam ' (Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry IV. i. 420). 

59 



60 THE ANCESTOR 

may be assigned to 1129-33, is a valuable link in the history 
of the Hampshire Farringdon, which appears in Domesday 
Book as the one manor in the county held by the Bishop of 
Exeter in right of his having in his hands the rich endowment 
of the Sussex church of Bosham. 1 

Next in order is the charter below, by which Henry I. 
grants, probably on the same occasion, to this ' Turstin the 
clerk ' permission to keep hounds for the chase of the hare and 
the fox on his Hampshire lands. The treasury clerk has 
already become a hunting man. 

Henricus Rex Anglorum justiciariis et vicecomitibus et baronibus et minis- 
tris de Hauntescira salutem, Concede Turstino clerico et heredibus suis quod 
habeat leporarios suos et brachetos suos ad lepores et vulpes capiendos. Teste 
R. de Curcy apud Wintoniam. 2 

We may now turn to the Pipe Roll of 1 130 in search of 
* Turstin the clerk,' and there we find him as holding property 
in Winchester. 3 With this clue we look for him in the sur- 
veys of the city made under Henry I. and in 1148,* and in 
both of these we find his houses in their respective streets. 5 

Between the date of these two surveys comes the next 
charter, granted by the Empress Maud on the occasion, 
evidently, of her formal reception at Winchester in 1141. 
One may note that the official class represented by Turstin 
usually favoured the empress as being her father's heir. It 
should be observed that in this charter Popham occurs for the 
first time among Turstin's lands. 

Matilda Imperatrix filia Henrici Regis Henrico episcopo Wyntoniensi et 
Willelmo camerario de Pont' et omnibus baronibus de Hantescira Francis et 
Anglis salutem. Sciatis me concessisse Turstino clerico omnes terras suas quas 
tenebat de feudo Henrici Regis die ilia qua fuit vivus et mortuus et terram de 
Ferendona et de Popham et omnes teneuras suas infra civitatem et extra 
tenendas sicut tenuit die ilia qua recepta fui apud Wintoniam 6 bene et in pace 
et honorifice et hereditabiliter et quiete in bosco et in piano et pratis et 
pasturis cum sacca et socha et tol et tiem et infangenethuf et cum consuetudini- 

1 See Victoria History of Hampshire, i. ; and my note in Sussex Arch. Coll. 
xliv. 142. 

3 Calendar of Patent Rolls, Richard II. i. ill. 

Under the ' auxilium civitatis ' we read ' Turstino clerico xii solidos.' 
* See Victoria History of Hampshire, \. 
5 Domesday Book, iv. 539, 542, 550, 553, 555, 561. 
8 3 March, 1141 (Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 58). 



THE RISE OF THE POPHAMS 61 

bus eisdem Terris pertinentibus. Testibus Nigello episcopode Hely et Milone 
de Gloecestria. 1 

This charter was repeated mutatis mutandis in one of Henry 
II. 3 But Turstin was now rising in the official world ; from 
1155 to 1159 he appears as sheriff of Hampshire, though, 
owing to his name being given as Turstin only, his identity 
has not been observed. 

In 1 1 60 Turstin was succeeded by his son, not only in his 
landed estates, but in the shrievalty of Hampshire. 3 This 
succession was the subject of our two next charters. By the 
first of these, which is addressed to the Bishop of Winchester, 
the barons, justices, sheriffs, and all the officers of Hampshire, 
and the citizens of Winchester, the king confirms to ' Richard 
son of Turstin the sheriff' and his heirs the estates atFarring- 
don and Binstead and all other estates held of himself and 
those within and without the city of Winchester. 4 

This was clearly the actual charter produced in court by 
Robert de Popham in 1268 (52 Hen. III.), though it was 
wrongly assigned on that occasion to the king's grandfather 
Henry I. : 

'et profert cartam domini Henrici Regis abavi (sic) domini Regis qui nunc 
est (Henry III.) que testatur quod idem Henricus Rex concessit et confirmavit 
cuidam Ricardo filio Turstini antecessoris ipsius Robert! omnes terras et 
teneuras in Benstude simul cum quibusdam aliis terris et teneuras.' 5 



1 Calendar of Patent Rolls, Richard II. i. no- 1. 

2 Ibid. Its witnesses were Nigel, Bishop of Ely ; Regonald, Earl of Corn- 
wall ; Henry de Essex the constable ; Richard de Humez the constable ; and 
Warin Fitz Gerold the chamberlain ; and it was granted at Westminster 
evidently in the early days of his reign. 

3 ' Ricardus filius Turstini de firma de Hantescira pro patre suo ' (Rot. Pip. 
6 Hen. II. p. 46). 

4 ' Sciatis me concessisse et carta mea presenti confirmasse Ricardo filio 
Turstini vie' et heredibus suis terram de Ferendona et terrain de Benesteda et 
omnes alias terras que tenet de feodo meo et omnes teneuras suas infra civi- 
tatem Wintonie et extra tenendas hereditabiliter . . . Testibus Ricardo de 
Canvilla, Willelmo filio Johannis, Willelmo Malet, Ranulfo de Broc, apud 
Morstonium ' (Calendar oj Patent Rolls, Henry IV. i. 420). The charter 
evidently passed in Normandy. 

8 Curia Regis Roll, No. 184, roll 4. Compare Placitonm Abbreviate, p. 
176. The assignation of this charter, on the roll, to Henry I. has very 
naturally misled the writer of the account of Binstead in the Victoria History of 
Hampshire (vol. ii.), and is a useful warning as to the confusion, even at that 
early date, between the two kings and their charters. 

E 



62 THE ANCESTOR 

The second charter relating to Richard's succession is 
granted by Arnulf, Bishop of Lisieux, a prelate who, although 
a notable man, has not hitherto, I believe, been known to 
have had any connexion with the * Honour ' of Bosham. 
Reference, however, to the Pipe Rolls of Henry II. proves 
that he actually held it ; while the roll of the I3th year 
(1167) contains the entry, ' Ferend[ona] Episcopi Luxov- 
[iensis] ' (p. 186), showing that Farringdon, as part of it, 
was then in his hands. This explains the charter (strictly 
* Letters Patent ') ' of Arnulr, bishop of Lisieux, addressed 
to all clerks and laymen pertaining to the chapelry of Bose- 
ham, granting to Richard his clerk the land which Turstin 
the father of the latter held in Ferend[on] by the service of 
the third part of a knight.' l It is singular that Richard in 
these ' Letters ' should be styled only a clerk of the bishop. 

I have looked through the bishop's printed letters to see 
if I could find any allusion to the chapelry of Bosham, to 
Farringdon, or to Richard, and have been fortunate enough 
to find this one in a letter to Richard, Bishop of Winchester 



Credo vos fideli retinere memoria Willelmum de Ferendona vicariam loci 
illius a tempore Thurstini, per totum ipsius et Ricardi filii ejus tempus usque 
ad mea tempora possedisse. Quumque capellaniam mihi regis munificentia 
contulisset, defuncto postmodum Ricardo per quern Willelmus eo vivente 
tenuerat, ego vicariam eandem prasdicto Willelmo in perpetuum concessi, qui- 
busdam additis, quae ipsius a me videbatur obsequium et devotio meruisse. 2 

Here the bishop is speaking of Farringdon and of Richard 
Fitz Turstin, and distinctly states that he himself owes the rich 
chapelry (of Bosham) to the munificence of the king. This 
letter must belong to the closing years of his life. 

Richard continued to be sheriff of Hampshire, year after 
year till Easter, 1 1 70, and the entry ' Potham vic[ecomitis] ' 
on the Pipe Roll of 1167 (p. 188) clearly refers to Popham 
and shows that he was then holding it. The great ' Inquest of 
Sheriffs 'in 1 1 70 3 resulted in Richard being one of those who 
lost his shrievalty, a shrievalty which he and his father had 
held since the king's accession. Here we are brought face to 

1 Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry IV. i. 421. 

2 Ed. Giles, p. 284. 

3 See The Commune o/ London, pp. 12536. 



THE RISE OF THE POPHAMS 63 

face with a subject of much more than mere local interest. 
Dr. Stubbs, in his Select Charters (1870), wrote that 

The sheriffs removed on this occasion from their offices were most ot 
them local magnates, whose chances of oppression and whose inclination to- 
wards a feudal administration of justice were too great. In their place Henry 
instituted officers of the Exchequer, less closely connected with the counties 
by property and more amenable to royal influence as well as more skilled 
administrators (p. 141). 

So too he observed, in his Constitutional History (1874), 
that 

Henry placed in their vacant magistracies the officers of the Exchequer 
whom he knew and trusted ; adopting in this respect the plan of his grand- 
father, who had used his judges for sheriffs (i. 474). 

The case of Richard, sheriff of Hampshire, is the first, 
perhaps, in which the history of the shrievalty and its holder 
has been worked out in detail ; and we can now assert, as the 
result, that, although he may not have acted personally, as an 
Exchequer officer, Richard essentially belonged by birth, not 
to the class of feudal magnates, but to that interesting official 
class which had risen under Henry I. and which had been so 
closely associated with the king's Exchequer. In addition to 
being sheriff of Hampshire, he had acted as ' fermor ' of 
Winchester that is to say, he { farmed ' the city at a heavy 
rent from the Crown, as to which, the Pipe Rolls show, 
there was a standing dispute between the Exchequer and him- 
self. When he went out of office in 1 1 70 he was heavily in 
arrear with his payments. On the ' farm ' of the county he 
owed the Crown 95 T,S. $d. ' blanch,' and on the { farm ' of 
the city no less than 173 us. jd. 1 ' blanch,' while other debts 
increased the amount by j 35. 4^. Five years later he had 
only succeeded in paying off some 25 out of the whole 
amount. 2 

The printed rolls carry us at present no further than this 
until we come to that of 1189, fourteen years later. On this 
we read 

Willelmus filius Turstini . . . debet vi/jf. et ix*. et xd. de misericordia 
fratris sui, sed mortuus est (p. 198). 

Warnertus venator reddit comp. de cxl/r. et xvtiLr. et xia'. blanc' de veteri 

1 The total ' farm ' of Winchester at the time seems to have been 
142 121. i^d. 'blanch.' 

2 Pipe Roll, 21 Henry II. pp. 189, 198. 



64 THE ANCESTOR 

firma civitatis Wintonie pro Willelmo filio Turstini cujus terram ipse, habet 
cum herede (p. 205). 

This is a most important entry, for it proves that Richard, 
in the meanwhile, had been succeeded by a brother William, 
and that this William had died recently leaving an ' heir.' 

Here however evidence again fails us for the present. 
Our next clue is found in the Testa de Nevill^ where an entry 
belonging to the early part of the thirteenth century runs : 

Agnes de Popham tenet v hydat* terre in Bensted' in socag' pro c sol' 
(P- 235)- 

From this point the descent is clear, for the Fine Roll of 
9 Henry III. shows us that Gilbert de Popham, in 1225, did 
homage for 4-5-! hides in Binsted and Alton as heir to his 
mother Agnes. 

These entries, taken together, make it clear enough that 
the Binsted estate, afterwards known as the manor of Binsted 
Popham, was held by Agnes in her own right ; and her sur- 
name implies that Popham descended with it. 1 The name of 
her husband is supplied by a suit recorded in Bractons Note 
Book (i. 277-8). We there read that in 1238-9 (23 Henry III.) 
Gilbert de Popham was summoned to warrant to Peter de 
Heies a 1 6 acres in Neatham on the strength of a charter 
granted by William Fitz Thurstin. Gilbert denied that he 
was heir to William Fitz Thurstin, and asserted that he held 
nothing in virtue of which he was bound to warrant ; Peter 
retorted that ' Gilbert's father Robert ' held seven acres in 
Neatham in consideration of doing so. We thus obtain a 
pedigree, of which the dotted line would indicate a very strong 
probability if it were not for Gilbert's positive assertion, ' quod 
non est haeres ipsius Willelmi.' 



1 'Agnes de Popham tenuit de domino Rege in capite tres hidas dim. virg. 
et quartam partem j virg' terre et unum molendinum in Bensted' et j hidam 
et dim. et dim. virg. terre et j molendinum cum pert, in Aulton' per servi- 
cium ex sol. per annum, et quod Gilebertus filius ejus propinquior heres ejus 
cst, cujus homagium dominus Rex inde cepit ' (p. 1 26). 

3 Ancestor to the Heighes family of Heigh or ' Heyes ' in Binsted (com- 
pare Victoria History of Hampshire, ii. 488). John de ' Heges' and Agnes his 
wife were Robert de Popham's opponents in the suit of 1268. 



THE RISE OF THE POPHAMS 65 



Turstin the Clerk (of Winchester). 
Held the Farringdon and Binsted 
estates. Sheriff of Hants 1 1 55-60 



Richard Fitz Turstin 


William Fitz Turstin, 


succeeded his father 


heir to his brother, 


1 1 60, sheriff of Hants 


lately dead in 1189 


1160-70. Held the 





Farringdon, Binsted 


j 


and Popham estates 


Agnes de = Robert 




Popham I 




Gilbert de Popham, 




heir to his mother 




in 1225 1 



Robert de Popharn of 
Popham and Binsted 
(Popham). Heir to 
his father in 1250; 
living 1268 



The tenure of the Pophams' three estates requires to be 
carefully distinguished. Binsted (Popham) they held directly 
from the Crown, apparently in socage ; at Farringdon they 
had held by knight-service of ' the Honour of Bosham ' ; at 
Popham itself they held, by knight-service, of Brabceuf, who 
held of St. John, who held (as his ancestor had done in 
Domesday) of the abbot of Hyde, who held of the Crown. 1 
Students of family history have need to watch for such sub- 
infeudations, for links are often omitted or confused, and the 
tenant at the bottom of the scale is the ancestor of the lords 
of the manor. 

The Pophams remained for several generations in posses- 
sion of the manor of that name, but the line ended in heir- 
esses. The Leyborne-Pophams of Littlecote claim descent, 
according to Burke s Landed Gentry, from a younger son of 
Gilbert de Popham (122550), who figures in that work as 
' Gilbert Popham de Popham, Esq., living temp. King John,' 
and as the husband of 'Joan, dau. of Robert Clark, Esq., 
feoffee in trust for the Manor of Popham,' who must have 
been the family solicitor ! I do not know the evidence for 

1 ' Gilbertus de Popham tenet dim. feodum militis in Popham de veteri 
feoff, de Roberto de Briebuf, et idem de Roberto de Sancto Johanne, et idem 
R. de abbate de Hyda, et abbas de Rege in capite ' (Testa de Nev'tU, p. 232). 



66 THE ANCESTOR 

this affiliation, nor do I know why this cadet is styled ' Sir 
Hugh de la (sic) Popham, Knt' As this mysterious surname 
emerges anew in his descendant, '.Sir John de la Popham,' 
one must assume that, like Kipling's liner, the Hampshire 
manor was ' a lady.' 

J. HORACE ROUND. 



THE JACKSONS IN IRELAND 

IN Mr. William Jackson Pigott's article on Sir Anthony 
Jackson in the July number of the Ancestor he mentions that 
the Greer family, who are connected by marriage with the 
Irish Quaker families of Jackson, claim descent from the Kil- 
lingwoldgraves Jacksons of Co. York. 

This claim ought not in my opinion to remain unchallenged, 
as it appears to me from a careful investigation of the early 
history of the Irish Jacksons, made about a year ago, to be 
utterly devoid of foundation. 

From Rutty's History of the Quakers (2nd ed. p. 99), we 
learn that 'William Edmondson (about 1656) with several 
friends, leaving the meeting to which they belonged well 
settled, viz. Richard Jackson, Anthony Jackson, John Thompson, 
Richard Fayle, John Edmundson, William Moon, and their 
families, removed and took land in the county of Cavan and 
dwelt there, and settled a meeting in that county.' 

William Edmundson, who was one of the earliest members 
of the Society of Friends that settled in Ireland, was born 
in Little Musgrave in Westmorland in 1627, and was bound 
apprentice to the trade of a carpenter and joiner. He after- 
wards joined the Parliamentary army, and served in it for 
some years. On leaving the army and marrying, he settled 
in Ireland, and after remaining in the Co. Armagh for several 
years, he and the several other members of the Society of 
Friends mentioned in the passage from Rutty's History above 
cited, migrated with their families to the Kempston estate in Co. 
Cavan. After some time disputes arose between them and 
Colonel Kempston, the owner, as to the conditions on which 
lettings were to be made to them, whereupon some of them 
left that part of the country and removed to Mountmellick 
in Queen's Co., while others continued in the Co. Cavan, and 
established a meeting for Divine worship (William Edmund- 
son's Jou.nal y p. 67 fed. 1820]). Richard Jackson above 
mentioned was one or those who settled in Mountmellick, 
while Anthony Jackson (reputed in the family to be his 
brother) remained in the Co. Cavan. Both Richard and 

6? 



68 THE ANCESTOR 

Anthony were leaders of the ' passive resistance ' movement 
of the day against the payment of tithes, and their losses 
by distraints year by year are to be. found in the Records of 
the Sufferings of the Society of Friends in the Registry of the 
Society in Dublin. 

The Mountmellick records of the Society show that 
Richard Jackson was born in 1626 at Eccleston in Lancashire, 
and that he was a soldier in the Parliamentary army when 
he came to Ireland in 1649. He joined the Society of 
Friends about 1654, and the births, deaths and marriages of 
four generations of his descendants are all to be found in the 
admirably kept records of the Society. 

Anthony Jackson appears to have been a member of the 
meeting of the Society held at Oldcastle in Co. Meath, on 
the borders of the Co. Cavan ; but unfortunately the records 
of this meeting are not now forthcoming. He had two sons, 
Thomas and Isaac, and the latter was the ancestor of Elizabeth 
Jackson who married Mr. Thomas Greer in 1787. 

Isaac Jackson, who was a small farmer and a handloom 
weaver, lived for many years at Ballytore in Co. Kildare. He 
and his wife Anne, daughter of Rowland Evans of Ballyloing, 
Co. Wicklow, were blessed with nine children ; and in 1725 
he and his wife and two of his children emigrated to the 
American colonies, and settled at London Grove (now called 
Harmony Grove), Chester County, Pennsylvania. His eldest 
son Thomas Jackson remained in Ireland, and lived at Pin- 
curry, Co. Tipperary, and afterwards at Monasteroris, King's 
Co. He was the father of William Jackson of Edenderry 
and Dublin, who had by his marriage with Sarah, daughter ot 
Daniel Cowman of Dublin, two children, viz. Mary, who died 
unmarried at the age of sixteen, and Elizabeth, who married 
Mr. Thomas Greer of Rhone Hill and Tullylagan. 

A vast amount of information as to Isaac Jackson and 
3089 of his descendants will be found in Proceedings of the 
Sesqui-centennial Gathering of the Descendants of Isaac and Anne 
Jackson at Harmony Grove, Chester County, Pa., 8//6 month i$tb, 
1875, together with the Family Genealogy' (Philadelphia, pub- 
lished by the committee for the family, 1878). 

For the purpose of compiling this book, the editor a 
member of the Jackson family came to England and Ireland, 
and endeavoured, without success, to trace the ancestry of 
Isaac Jackson's father Anthony Jackson. He visited amongst 



THE JACKSONS IN IRELAND 69 

other places Great Eccleston in the parish of St. Michael's-on- 
Wyre, Lancashire, but found that the parish registers did not 
cover the period at which the baptism of Anthony Jackson 
might possibly be recorded. The History of St. Micbaet' s-on- 
Wyre, published by the Chetham Society, however, shows that 
there were many Jacksons living in the parish in the early part 
of the seventeenth century, and some of the other publications 
of the same Society also supply evidence that then, as now, 
Jackson was a common name in Lancashire. It may be men- 
tioned, too, that the Records of the Mountmellick meeting of 
the Society of Friends, while Richard Jackson and his family 
were members of it, contain entries relating to an entirely 
distinct family of Jackson, also coming from Lancashire. 

Although there is not any actual proof that Anthony Jack- 
son and Richard Jackson were brothers, many things in 
addition to family tradition favour the idea. Each was a 
prominent and zealous supporter of the doctrines of his 
religion ; each named his eldest son Thomas, and another 
son Isaac ; and each was a friend and follower of William 
Edmundson, the protagonist of the Irish Quakers at that 
period. 

But whether Anthony Jackson was a brother of Richard 
Jackson or not, does not appear very material. To ascertain 
the nature of his original social position and upbringing we 
may apply the maxim ' noscitur a sociis.' 

Sir Anthony Jackson was a man of good family, a church- 
man, a courtier, and an ardent Royalist ; while the Anthony 
Jackson in question was a small farmer, a Puritan, and a 
Cromwellian. Any one who has studied the early history of 
the Society of Friends knows that the Society was at this time 
recruited mainly from yeomen and the lower middle class, and 
not from the landed gentry. Few would be likely to join 
its ranks who were not already imbued with Puritan principles. 

Not only is there an entire absence of any evidence of a 
descent of this Anthony Jackson from the Jacksons of Kil- 
lingwoldgraves, but there is a strong presumption against any 
such descent. 

It will be found, I think, that the first suggestion of this 
descent came from ' George Henry de Strabolgi Plantagenet ' 
Harrison or whatever his proper designation may be whose 
unscrupulous conduct in pedigreemongering is dealt with by 
Mr. Walter Rye in his Records and Record Searching. 



7 o THE ANCESTOR 

Portions of the Greer pedigree as given im the early edi- 
tions of Burke's Landed Gentry were severely handled by 
' Anglo-Scotus ' in the Herald and Genealogist (vi. 137) ; and I 
think the alleged descent from the Killingwoldgraves Jacksons 
is almost worthy of a place in the Ancestor under the head- 
ing of ' What is Believed.' 

I notice that in recent editions of Burke's Landed Gentry, 
under the pedigree of ' Greer of Tullylagan,' not only is the 
descent from the Killingwold Grove (sic) Jacksons given, but 
it is added : ' To this family the late Gen. Andrew Jackson, 
President of the United States, and the late " Stonewall " 
Jackson, the celebrated Confederate General, belonged.' 

The origin of this latter statement is to be found in the 
preface to the American work on the descendants of Isaac 
Jackson already referred to. But the editor of that book, 
though painstaking, was no genealogist ; and starting with 
the idea that ' Jackson ' existed in England as a surname 
before the Conquest (!), he seems to have thought that all 
Irish Jacksons were necessarily related to one another. He 
did not, however, give any evidence to establish a relationship 
between the well-known President, or the General, and Isaac 
Jackson of Harmony Grove, nor indicate how that connection 
could be traced. I have not the book at hand, and 1 think 
that the relationship was only mentioned as ' a belief in the 
family.' It has, I think, no more substantial foundation than 
the myth concerning the Killingwoldgraves descent. 

EDMUND T. BEWLEY. 



THE HEREFORD FAMILY OF PLYMOUTH 

BENOLTE'S Visitation of Devon, made in 1531, comprises 
a short pedigree, of which the substantial portions (in 
modernized form) are subjoined : 

JOHN HEREFORD of Monmouth m. Pernyll (no more 
information given,. 

JOHN HEREFORDE of London m. Joan, daughter and 
heir of Thomas Wood of Eynsham, Oxfordshire, and had 
issue John. 

JOHN m. Anne, only daughter and heir of Richard Adyffe 
of York, and has issue Henry, Margaret and Joan. 

HENRY m. Felice daughter of John Orange of Wimborne, 
Dorset and has issue. 

MARGARET m. Henry Trefre. 

JOAN m. Robert Farey of Cullompton, and has issue John, 
Ewen, Clement, Thomazine and Alice. 

The pedigree is not signed or dated, and it will be observed 
that no information is given as to the place of abode of the 
living representative of the family. It is also notable that the 
names of one of his daughter's children are given in full, but 
not his son's. Curiously too, the wives and husbands of the 
several members of the family all come from different parts of 
the country. It is evident, from the fact that the pedigrees 
which occupy several preceding and following pages of the 
volume are those of South Devon families, that the Hereford 
family was living in that part of the county. Since the pedi- 
gree came under my notice first, some years ago, I have by 
the help of the Calendars of State Papers temp. Henry VIII. 
printed in the Rolls Series, identified the third John Hereford 
with ' John Herford,' or ' Harford,' who was Mayor of Ply- 
mouth in 1517-8 and again in 1526-7. I have also been able, 
as I think, to account For the omission of Henry Hereford's 
children from the pedigree. 

As it may serve to encourage such of the readers of the 
Ancestor as are still ' pedigree hunting,' to see how the history 
of an obscure family may be elucidated by the public records, 
I propose to give as briefly as possible the data upon which I 
base my conclusions. 



72 THE ANCESTOR 

1512, June 22. Appointment of John Dolman to be 
'customer' (i.e. collector of customs) during royal pleasure, 
of Plymouth and Fowey, in place or John Hartford. 

1520, May 23. Letter from John Herforde, customer 
of Plymouth to the King, advising him of the approach of 
the Emperor's Fleet. 

1528. Payment of 95 js. 6d. out of the Treasury to 
Hen. Hereford, customer of Plymouth, for ships sent by 
him into Spain with the King's ambassadors and letters, and 
'for the discrying the Emperor's Navy at his last coming 
out of Spain into England.' 

Very soon after this, Henry Hereford seems to have got 
into trouble, for in October 1529 George Frauncys was 
appointed to be customer of the ports of Plymouth and Fowey 
in Hereford's place. 

Sometime in 1531 'Henry Herforde' was in London, a 
prisoner, and writing to the Duke of Norfolk praying for 
speedy release that he might pay his debt to the Crown. 

Thomas Crumwel's memorandum for 1533-5 contain the 
following characteristic and ominous items : 

(a) To remember Herffbrde for his end to be taken with 
the King for 1300. 

() ' Mr. Attorney ' to move for ' Herforde ' for his end 
etc. (as before). 

(f) Information against { Harford, customer of Plome- 
mouth.' 

1534, Jan. 27. One 'John Orenge ' writes, evidently 
from a remote part of the country, to Crumwel as to a 
recognizance wherein the writer stands bound for 40 
for ' Henry Harfforde, whom,' he adds, ' I wish I had never 
known.' 

It will have been noticed that the Henry Herford of the 
pedigree married a daughter of ' John Orange.' 

In 1 534, Henry Herford writes again to the Duke of 
Norfolk to the same effect as before. 

1536, Dec. 19. 'Felicia Hertforde ' writes from London 
to Lady Lisle (Honor Grenville, second wife of Arthur 
Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle), thanking her for her goodness 
to the writer ' when I was your poor neighbour at the Black- 
friars,' and offering the benefit of her advice and experience 
as to her Ladyship's illness, having suffered in the same 
(unexplained) manner herself, but being then quite well. 



THE HEREFORD FAMILY 73 

During the years 1537-8, several letters were written to 
Lady Lisle, who was probably then in Devonshire, by John, 
Lord Hussey, in London, as to the appointment of ' Mrs. 
Harforde ' to some post in his correspondent's household ; but 
the proposal does not seem to have been acceptable to Lady 
Lisle. Finally, on 22 March 1538, Lord Hussey writes that 
' to-day Mr. Harford of Plymouth is executed for treason, 
and with him a money-washer. Now Harford's wife is a 
widow.' 

Hollinshed and other chroniclers mention this execution as 
having taken place in 1538 ; but the several accounts are 
slightly discrepant in details of names and dates. 

After 1538, there are various references to 'Felyce Hert- 
ford ' or c Harford,' widow who seems to have done her best, 
after her husband's death, to obtain her dower out of his lands. 
These efforts seem ultimately to have been crowned with a 
measure of success, for there is recorded on the Patent Rolls 
for the year 1 543 a document which, even taken alone, would 
be sufficient to identify the Plymouth people with the family 
whose pedigree is recorded by Benolte. It is epitomized in 
the printed Calendar as follows : 

May 3. Lease to Felicia Herford, widow, late wife of 
Henry Herford, deceased, of three tenements in Plymouth 
worth three marks a year ; three messuages etc. in Benston 
and Eynesham-Tylgartesley, Oxfordshire, worth 4. ^j. a 
year ; and a messuage and two shops etc. in Eynesham 
worth 105. a year : seised for the debt of John Hereford and 
the said Henry his son, collector of customs and subsidies of 
Plymouth and Fowey ; for life or 50 years from March 33 
Hen. VIII. at 8. oj. U. rent. 

The property in Oxfordshire comprised in the lease is 
evidently the inheritance (or the remains of it) of Joan, 
daughter of Thomas Wood of Eynesham, mentioned in the 
pedigree. 

It is most unfortunate, from the genealogical point of view, 
that the names of Henry Hereford's children are not given 
in the pedigree, but the omission is no doubt due to the fact 
that their father was in 1531 a convicted felon. 

The name of ' Hurford ' appears in the Parish Register of 
Holcombe Rogus, north Devon, in 1541, and even earlier in 
certain neighbouring parishes in Somersetshire, and in Devon- 
shire a family of that name has been traced, uninterruptedly, 



74 



THE ANCESTOR 



from 1541 to the present time, but, so far, there is an absolute 
failure of evidence connecting it with the Plymouth Herfords. 
It would, however, seem probable that Henry Herford left 
descendants, for at the Heralds' College there is recorded a 
grant of arms evidently founded on those allowed by Benolte 
in 1 53 1 (viz. silver a fesse indented gules [of five fusils] with 
a leopard sable in the chief) to ' Hertford ' of Plymouth, 
made by Sir Christopher Barker who held the office of 
'Garter' from 1536 to 1549 and these same arms have, as 
a matter of fact, been used for several generations, with or 
without authority, by the north Devon family. 

No trace however of a Plymouth family of Hertford is 
to be found among the Exeter Wills ; nor in the Plymouth 
Parish Register, as the writer is credibly informed. 

The ' Henry Trefre ' of the pedigree can be identified as 
one of the Trefrys of Fowey, Cornwall, by the fact that 
when Richard Symonds visited that place in 1644, he found 
the Hereford arms as given above grouped with those of the 
Trefry family in one of the church windows. 

A. F. HERFORD. 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR OF 

CHANCERY SUITS OF THE TIME OF 

CHARLES I. 

ELDRED and another v. COURTEENE and others 

EJ T Replication ( ) of Edward Eldred and George Avice to 

the answers of William Courteene, Thomas Trenchfeild and Gregory Clement, 
defendants maintaining their complaint. 



EVERED V. WoLSTON 

Bill (z Feb. 1 6f) of Richard Evercd of Deynton, co. Northamp- 
ton, gentleman. 

Answer (3 April 1630) of John Wolston of Deynton, husbandman, and 
Agnes his wife. 

Concerning a lease of a tenement and close made by the defendant 
John to the complainant. 



EDGECOMBE v. EDGECOMBE and others 

EjV Bill (5 Nov. 1627) of Thomas Edgecombe of Tryw'ngton (?), co. 
Devon, yeoman. 

Answer (at Launceston 3 Oct. . . .) of Mary Gyn, wife ot John Gyn, 
and defendant with the said John and Mary Edgecombe her mother. 

Concerning a messuage and lands in Launceston, formerly of Francis 
Edgecombe, younger brother of complainant. 



Thomas Edgecombe . . . = M a r y = Francis Edgecombe of Launceston, 

the complainant I yeoman. Died about two years 



J yeoman. Died about tv 
since 
argaret Edgecombe 



Marjr wife Margaret Edgecombe 
of John dau. and heir. Died 
Gyn or at Easter last, s.p. 

Jenny She was aged 14 at 

her father's death 



EATON and others o. BEARE 

E A Bill (29 J une 1631) of Robert Eaton of Barnestaple, co. Devon, 
plasterer, Digory Braunton of Bediford, yeoman, and Dorothy his wife. 

Answer (5 Oct. 1631) of Joane Beare, widow, and Arthur Beare, de- 



fendants. 

75 



76 THE ANCESTOR 

The complainants say that Sir Richard Greenevile late of Stow, co. 
Cornwall, knight, deceased, was seised of the manor of Bediford, co. 
Devon, and being so seised and intending to go a voyage in the ser- 
vice of the late Queen Elizabeth, and being uncertain whether he 
should return or no, the voyage being full of peril, 'noblely and like 
himselfe did resolve to benefite and reward such of his servants as hee 
had found faithfull.' Calling therefore to mind the faithful service for 
30 years of William Eaton, late of Barnestaple, plasterer, deceased, 
father of the compt., the said Sir Richard resolved to bestow upon 
William Eaton, Mary his wife and Robert their son for their lives, 
the reversion of a house and four acres of land in Bediford, parcel of 
the manor wherein Richard Hitchcocke and Agnes his wife had then 
an estate for life. Sir Richard, by deed 12 March 27 Eliza, granted 
to the said William, Mary and Robert, the said messuage and lands 
for their three lives, for which grant the said William continued to 
serve Sir Richard. After the death of Richard Hitchcocke his wife 
Agnes married one John Alvert. Agnes survived her husband and 
died six months since, and the compt. is survivor of the grantees. 
Joane Beare of Westleigh, widow, and Arthur her son have entered 
upon the premises under a pretended lease from Sir Barnard Greene- 
vile, son and heir of Sir Richard. 

EDWARDS v. MIDDELTON 

EJL Bill (2 Feb. 163^) of John Edwards the younger, gent., son and 
heir apparent of John Edwards of Chirke, co. Denbigh, esquire. 

Bill (20 June 1631) of John Edwards son and heir of John Edwards the 
younger by Magdalen his wife. 

Answers (29 Sep. 1631) of Sir Thomas Middelton, knight, and (27 June 
1631) of Sir Thomas Middelton the younger, knight. 

The complainant says that his father is seised for his life of the capital 
messuage of Chirke, with divers houses and land in the county of 
Denbigh, with remr. to the compt. for his life, with remr. to John 
Edwards the compt.'s son and heir apparent and the heirs male of his 
body, by force of conveyances made by John Edwards the elder on 
the marriage of the compt. with Magdalen (Broughton) his now wife, 
mother of his said son. Sir Thomas Middelton the younger having 
planted himself in Chirke and purchased divers lands there and coveting 
the lands there of the compt.'s father, hath lent the compt., who is at 
great charges with his wife and many children, a sum of money. The 
compt. has been driven to make sale of his reversion of certain lands to 
the said Middelton. The bill of the younger compt. recites the 
settlement made before his mother's marriage as dated 2 1 Jan. I Jac. I. 
and made between (i) John Edwards the elder and John Edwards the 
younger, (ii) Roger Puleston of Emerall, co. Flint, esq. (afterwards 
knight and now dead), and (iii) Morgan Broughton of Marchwiell, co. 
Denbigh, esquire, Thomas Puleston of Lightwood, co. Flint, gent., 
Richard Lloyd of Aston, co. Salop, gent., and Edward Kinaston of 
Pant y Bersley, co. Salop, gent. John Edwards the elder married four 
wives. By his first wife the daughter of Sir Richard Sherburne, 
knight, he had i,ooo/. portion. With his second wife, the widow 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 77 

Broughton (maternal grandmother to the compt. John, son of John 
the younger) he had i,ooo/. By Mrs. Bould his third wife he had 
3,ooo/., and with his now wife he had 6oo/. John Edwards the 
younger hath but 4O/. yearly to maintain himself, his wife and eleven 
children. John Edwards the elder was much offended with his 
grandson John Edwards, the son of John Edwards the younger, for 
his marriage with one of the daughters of Sir Edward Trevor, knight, 
which Sir Edward and his children are well affected in religion, and 
is also offended for that his said grandson conformed himself and came 
to church as soon as he came to 21 years. The said John Edwards 
the elder hath no son but John the compt. and one daughter married 
long since and her portion paid. 

ELLICE v. APPLEBY 

Bill (22 April 1629) of Robert Ellice of Gray's Inn, co. Middlesex, 
gent. 

Answer (2 May 1629) of Thomas Appleby, a mercer of Oxford. 

Concerning money lent by the defendant to the complainant when 
the former was, about four or five years past, residing in Lincoln 
College, Oxford, as a scholar and a student there. The defendant 
says that the compt. was first of Mcrton College. 

EDOW v. KYFFIN 

EJj- Bill (14 July 1641) of Joshua Edow of Bronington in Hanmer, 
co. Flint, gent., and Katherine his wife. Suit against Richard Kyffin and 
Jane his wife for alleged detention of deeds. 

Roger Eyton of Halghton in 
Hanmer co. Flint, gent., who 
died about twenty-five years 
ince 



Humphrey Eyton, gent. Jane Eyton, sister Dorothy Eyton, died 

son and heir, died s.p. and co-heir, wife before her brother, 

about eight years since of Richard Kyffin wife of ... Bedow 



Katherine, sister and heir Samuel Bcdow, co-heir 

and admix, of Samuel with Jane Kyffin of his 

Bedow and wife of Joshua uncle, and now dead s.p 

Edow about four years since 

EDWARDS v. FILLY 

EJ, Bill (18 June 1632) of Walter Edwards of Obley in Clomberry, 
co. Salop, husbandman. 

Answer (29 Sep. 1632) of Henry Filly, son of Henry Filly, late of Obley. 
Concerning an exchange of lands in Obley made in 22 Eliza, between 
Henry Filly the elder and Edward ap Evan, grandfather of the compt. 
Edward ap Evan died and his son John Edwards the compt.'s father 
survived him twenty years. Henry Filly the father died about 46 
years past. 

F 



78 THE ANCESTOR 

ELLACOTT v. STAYNROD and others 

EJ Bill (8 Nov. 1632) of Nicholas Ellacott of St. Clement Danes 
without, Temple Bar, complainant. 

Answers (20 Nov. 1632) of Jervies Staynrod, citizen and merchant taylor, 
and (21 Nov. 1632) of John Jefferey, gent., Martin Page, and John Hide, 
citizen and vintner. 

Concerning the estate of John Bevington of Chancery Lane, who 
being seised (under a lease of 52 years made 19 May 37 Eliza.) of a 
messuage in Chancery Lane called the St. John Baptist's Head granted 
the same to Jacob Page his son in law. 

John Bevington of Chancery Lane, = Grace relict and co-ex, of her husband, 
who made a will in 1 3 Jac. I. I She made her will about twelve years past 





i 


. | 




| 


Jacob Page, died = 


= Denys Bevington 


= Nicholas Ellacott = A daughter 


A daughter 


at Shrovetide 12 
Jac. I. 


relict and admix, 
of Jacob Page 


the complainant, I married 
married to Denys 1 Jervis 
Bevington z Jan. I Staynrod 

I6 ' 1 


married 
John Hide 


1 




1 


I i 




John Page, 


who is 


Grace Page, 


Edward Page, Martin Page, now an 




said by the 


compt. 


married about 


died a minor apprentice to Richard 




to have come of Nov. 22 Jac. 


Hough, alias Wood- 




age in Nov. 


21 Jac. 


I. to Richard 


keeper, who married 




I. The 


defend- 


Barlo 


one of the daughters 




ants say he 


died a 




of Nicholas Ellacott. 




minor 






He came of age in 










Sept. 1631 





EDWARDS v. EDWARDS 

Bill (15 July 1641) of Robert Edwards of Burgeding, co. Mont- 
gomery, gent. 

Answer (6 Nov. 1641) of Katherine Edwards, in the bill named as 
Katherine Edwards alias Humffrey, the mother of the complainant. 

Concerning the defendants dower in Burgeding. She calls the compt. 
a very unnatural and disobedient son. Her late husband was Edward 
David ap Morris of Bargeding, and she had other children beside the 
compt. 



EYSTON and another v. MONEY and others 

Bill (23 Oct. 1632) of William Eyston of Catmere, Berks, and 
Thomas Nelson of Chaddleworth, esquires. 

Answer (8 Nov. 1632) of Richard Money, Samuel Ironmonger and 
William Ironmonger (of Reading). 

Concerning the cutting of woods in Henwicke, Thatcham and Shawe. 
The compt. Samuel is son of another Samuel Ironmonger, who died 
in August i Car. I., whose exors. the defendants are. The defend- 
ants name Thomas Ironmonger, younger son of the dead Samuel. 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 79 

EYRE v. EYRE and another 

E-fa Bill (n Feb. 164.2) of John Eyre of Hathersedge, co. Derby, 

gent. 

Answer (19 Oct. 1641) of Robert Eyre, esq., Thomas Eyre, gent., and 

George Wilshawe (defendants with Elizabeth Eyre), late wife of George Eyre 

who died 10 years since. 

Concerning lands in Offerton in Hathersedge of which Robert Eyre 
of Highlow, esq., was formerly seised. The said Robert conceiving 
a displeasure against his wife Bridget refused to live longer with her, 
and made a settlement upon her for her separate maintenance by an 
indenture made 20 April 1 1 Jac. I. between him and Sir John Ferrers, 
knight, her brother. The said Bridget yet lives. Robert had issue 
an only son Thomas Eyre, whose courses his father misliked. Thomas 
was father of Robert the defendant. Robert Eyre the grandfather by 
deed of feoffment 20 April 2 Car. I. settled the messuage and lands 
called the Callowe for life upon Mary Barley his cousin. This Mary, 
say the defendants, was a popish recusant and induced and drew 
away Robert to become one also, for which he was convicted. 



EMOTT and another v. SOMASTER and another 

Bill (29 Nov. 1641) of James Emott and Richard Belfield of 
Paington, co. Devon, gentlemen, compts. against George Somaster and 
Thomas Hammett. 

One Anne Somaster, dau. and heir of one Sweeteland of Stokegabriell, 
deceased, was left in the care of the compts. and had an estate of 
2,ooo/. value left her by her father. Her mother Cecily Sweetland 
had her wardship, and remarried with one Allan Lyde. The said 
Anne married Mr. George Somaster against the good liking of her 
guardians. They lived not long together and she returned at length 
to her mother, the Bishop of the diocese making an order for their 
living asunder. 

EVANS v. BUCKINGHAM 

EJy Bill (25 Nov. 1641) of John Evans of Colridge, co. Devon, yeoman 
compt. against Annanias Buckingham and Phillippe his wife. 

Concerning the estate of Richard Evans late of Colridge, deceased, 
father of the compt., whose relict Phillippe, the compt.'s mother is 
now wife of Annanias Buckingham. 



ELLYS v. ELLYS 

Answer (21 June 1632) of Sydney Ellys, gent., to the bill of com- 
plaint of Roger Ellys, esquire. 

Concerning a rectory, probably in the marches of Wales. The de- 
fendant names Andrew Ellys, who was great-uncle to the complainant. 
The compt. is married and has children. The answer names Francis 
Ellys, kinsman of the compt. 



8o THE ANCESTOR 

ELLICE v. ANGELL and another 

E-jL Bill (18 June 1629) of Robert Ellice of Grays Inn, Middlesex, 
gent., and Thomas Ellice of the same, his brother, compts. against William 
Angell, citizen and merchant taylor, and Thomas Butler, gent. 

The defendants were exors. of the will dated July 1625 ot Griffin 
Ellice of London, merchant taylor, deceased, father of the compts., 
who named them as his exors. until Thomas Ellice his younger son 
should be of full age, to which age he came in August last. 

EVENS v. DIXON and others 

E Jy Answers (2 Jan. 1 64^) of Anne Dixon alias Bancks and Elizabeth 
Kiggalls (?) defendants (with John Waller) to the bill of Edward Evens, gent. 
Concerning a legacy given to the compt. under the will of Christopher 
Norris his uncle, father to these two defendants, which will was dated 
22 July 1645 and proved by Mercy, these defendants' mother, who 
had been named extrix. with one Edward Morgan. The said Mercy 
survived her husband less than a year and made a will in July 1 646, 
which was proved by the defendant John Waller of St. Saviour's 
Southwark, brewer. 

EDCCUMBE v. CRUSE 

EJ_ Bill (14 June 1632) of Thomas Edgcumbe of Ermingeton, co. 
Devon, yeoman. 

Answer (3 Oct. 1632) at Egloskerry, co. Cornwall, of Thomas Cruse, 
esquire, and Elizabeth his wife. 

Concerning a bond whereby in October 19 Jac. I. one Francis Edge- 
combe of Launceston, yeoman, became bound to one John Baron. 
The compt. is eldest brother of the said Francis and next heir of 
Margaret, dau. and heir of Francis. The defendant Elizabeth was 
relict and extrix. of John Baron. 

EVANS and another v. DONE 

EJ T Bill (23 June 1631) of Richard Evans and Susan his wife, and 
Elizabeth Done an infant. 

Answers (4 Aug. 1631) of Agnes Done, widow, and (10 Oct. 1631) of 
John Betteson and Richard Kilverte, esq. (defendants with John Done, cord- 
wainer, William Cooke and Sarah Maybancke). 

Concerning the estate of John Done, citizen and white baker of Lon- 
don, deceased. 



. . , = John Done, citizen and = Agnes the Robert Done = Elizabeth dau. of a 


white baker, who made defendant 


former wife of her 


a will 5 Sept. 22 Jac. 


I. 


husband's 


brother 






John 





n 

John Done, sailor. = Susan, relict = Richard Evans William Done James Done 

Will dated 22 Nov. and extrix. of died s. p. died s. p. 

1626 John Done 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 81 

ELAM v. HALL 

Bill (25 May 1647) of Christopher Elam of Brampton, co. Derby, 
yeoman. 

Answer (21 June 1647) of George Hall of Lancashire, yeoman. 
Concerning dealings in malt. 

EDWARDS v. LUCAS and others 

E-g\ Bill (14 Nov. 1645) of Abraham Edwards the younger of Port- 
slade, co. Sussex, gent., and Abraham Edwards, only son and heir of Abraham 
Edwards the elder late of Portslade, gent., deceased, an infant under 2 1 yean 
by the said Abraham Edwards the younger, his uncle and guardian. 

Answer (19 Jan. 164$) of Walter Lucas, gent., and Frances his wife, 
Robert Smith and Jane his wife, Mary Ledbeater, widow, John Chatfeild and 
Elizabeth Chatfeild his daughter (a minor). 

Concerning the alleged will of Abraham Edwards of Worth, co. Sussex, 
deceased, dated 18 April, 1639. The defendants say that they are his 
heirs at law. 

Edwards 
I 



Frances, died = Abraham Edwards = Anne, relict Abraham Edwards 
four or five of Worth, co. 
years since Sussex, died s. p. at 

Worth after Sep. 1643 



Abraham Edwards Abraham Edwards 

of Portslade, gent. of Portslade, the 

younger 



Abraham Edwards, 
son and heir 

EYRE v. SMITH and others 

E^s, Replication ( ) of Edmund Eyre, to the answers of Lod- 

wicke Smith and Mary his wife, Ursula Dodd, John Bowman, George Blundell 
and Richard Wood, defendants. 

Concerning the goods of the compt. unjustly seized and carried away. 

EDWARDS v. LIDSEY and another 

EJ T Bill (8 Feb. 164$) of William Edwards of Kingstone, co. Surrey, 
gent. 

Answer (15 Feb. 164^) ot Richard Lidsey ot Kingstone, maltster (de- 
fendant with George Geldon). 

Concerning a lease in Kingstone. 

AP EDWARD v. GRIFFITH 

E T \j Bill (11 June 1632) of Hugh ap Edward of Penryn Vawr, co. 
Montgomery, gent. 

Answer (6 Feb. 163!) of David Griffith and Syna his wife. 



82 THE ANCESTOR 

Concerning messuages and lands in Penryn Vawr, whereof Maud verch 
Jevan was seized. Action for recovery of deeds. The defendant 
Syna was late wife to Lewis ap Owen, .son of Owen ap Griffith ap 
Llewellyn, and is mother of his heir John Lewis, now aged nine. The 
compt. gives this pedigree : 

Maude verch Jevan, who made a settlement 
on her son's marriage in Sep. 3 Eliz. 



Jevan Griffith ap Llewellyn, = Jonett verch Thomas 
son and heir | ap Roger, sister of 

Roger ap Thomas 



Edward ap Jevan ap Griffith 



Hugh ap Edward, ion 
and heir, compt. 

EMPINGHAM and others v. PHILLIPSON and another 

Bill (20 April 1629) of Dunston Empingham of Ulcebye, co. Lin- 
coln, yeoman, Robert Empingham and Simon Empingham of Barton upon 
Humber, yeomen, and Thomas Tofte of Barton, yeoman, and Avis his wife. 

Answer (26 March i6|) of Thomas Phillipson and Elizabeth his wife 
and Robert Upplebye. 

Concerning the will of Leonard Empingham. 

i. ii. 

Empingham = Avis, who survived both husbands = Crosse 

I and died about thirteen years since 
i. ii. 

Leonard Empingham of = Elizabeth = Thomas 
Barton, yeoman. Died Phillipson 

about six years since 



Dunston 


1 

Robert 


Simon 


Thomas 


Avis wife 
of Thomas 


Elizabeth 


1 

Mary 


Cecily 










Tofte 









EVANS v. BACKHOUSE and others 

Bill (19 Nov. 1644) of Robert Evans of Reading, tanner, and Anne 

his wife. 

Answer (20 Nov. 1644) of Edward Backhouse (of Reading) the father, 

Edward Backhouse the son, Thomas Backhouse of Grayes in Oxford, Thomas 

Hensey and Peter Wood. 

Concerning a box of bonds and money which, as is alleged by the 
compt. one John Backhouse of Reading, a well affected person to the 
parliament, concealed during the siege of Reading. The compt. 
Anne is his relict and extrix. and Edward Backhouse the elder is his 
brother. 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 83 

EVKLYN V. OCKLY 

E J T Bill (3 Sep. 1 646) of Richard Evelyn of Baynards in Ewhurst, co. 
Surrey, esquire. 

Answer (4 Sep. 1 646) of Henry Ockly of Ewhurst, gent. 

Concerning a messuage and lands called Somersbury in Ewhurst. 

EDGAR aRas SNOWE v. BLANCHARD and others 

EJ K Bill (9 Feb. i6f) of William Edgar aRas Snowe of Longstocke, co. 
Southampton, yeoman. 

Answer (9 April 1630) of Alice Blanchard, widow, and John Hughes 
(defendants with Thomas Snowe). 

Concerning a messuage and lands in Stockbridge and elsewhere in 
Hampshire, of which Robert Blanchard of Stockbridge, husbandman, 
was formerly seised. The defendant Alice is his relict. Agnes Edgar, 
widow, the compt.'s mother had dower in these lands. Robert 
Blanchard is described by these defendants as a very weak man and 
altogether illiterate. Joan Edgar, widow, is named. 



EYRE . BRIGHT and another 

E-Jy Bill (15 June 1631) of Henry Eyre of Edall, co. Derby, gent. 

Answer (24 Sep. 1631) of Stephen Bright and Thomas Browne, gent. 
Concerning a crown lease made in 1602 to the compt. of Lady Booth's 
vaccary in Edall, the moiety being in trust for one Margery Eyre, 
wife of Robert Eyre. 

ELLIS and others v. NOYCE and others 

E^ Bill (15 May 1628) of John Ellis of Oxford, gent., William Alex- 
ander of Caversham, co. Oxford, gent., Hugh Ellis of Henley on Thames, co. 
Oxford, gent., William Jerish of Sinsam, co. Berks, Thomas Headland of 
Shinfeild, co. Berks, and Edward Ellis of Swallowfeild, co. Berks. 

Answer (13 June 1628) of Richard Noyce, gent., and Grissell his wife 
and Thomas Brickett (defendants with Nicholas Gunter of Reading and Edward 
his son). 

Concerning the parsonage of Shinfeild, of which John Ellis of Shin- 
feild was seised. Edward Ellis the compt. is named as his brother. 

i. ii. Hi. iv. 

Anne, firit == = John Ellis of Shinfeild. = Grissell, third = Richard Noyce of 

wife I second wife I Will dated 16 Sep. 1626 I wife Shinfeild, gent. 



I wife 



Anne Ellis Elizabeth John Ellis Nicholas Ellis Grissell Ellis 

Ellis 



FORWARD v. MADOCKE 

Fy Replication ( ) of John Forward and Elizabeth his wife to 

the answer of Maximilian Madocke, defendant. 
The complainants maintain their bill. 



8 4 



THE ANCESTOR 



FOSTER v. SMITH and others 

Fi Replication ( ) of Arthur Foster to the 'answers of Thomas 

Smith and Jane his wife and Jane Foster (an infant, by Thomas Smith her 
guardian) and Thomas Payne. 

The complainants maintain their bill. 



FORD f. TOWNSEND 

F^ Replication ( ) of William Ford to the answer of Christopher 

Townsend, defendant. 

The complainant maintains his bill. 



FAULZER v. PEAKE and others 

F Answer (22 June 1646) of William Peake and Margaret his wife, 
two of the defendants to the bill of Robert Faulzer, complainant. 

Concerning sums of money alleged to have been lent by Milicent, 
wife of the compt. and godmother to Mary Peake, one of the children 
of these defendants. 



FILL and another v. DABBS and another 

F| Replication ( ) of Philip Fill, Thomas Fill and William 

Cotterell, complainants, to the answers of Thomas Dabbs, Elizabeth his wife 
and Michael Knight. 

Concerning lands late of John Fill, deceased, which he is said to have 
leased to William Cotterell. He died without issue and Philip and 
Thomas are his brothers and heirs. He was uncle to Thomas Dabbes 
and his wife. 

FRANKE v. HART 

Fi Replication ( ) of William Franke, complainant, to the 

answer of John Hart. 

The complainant maintains his bill. 

FAWNT v. FAWNT 

F-f Replication of Frances Fawnt, complainant, to the answers of George 
Fawnt and Henry Fawnt, esquires. 
The complainant maintains his bill. 

FANE v. LEWKNOR and others 

F Further answer (zo May 1647) of Dame Mary Lewknor, widow, 
one of the defendants to the bill of Dame Anne Fane, widow. 

Concerning a lease alleged to have been made by one Gifford to Sir 
Lewis Tresham, who made some estate to Thomas Henshaw, another 
defendant. 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 85 

FANE t>. LEWKNOR and others 

FA Further answer (20 May 1647) of Thomas Henshaw, gent., one of 
the defendants to the bill of Dame Anne Fane, widow. 
[See also F|]. 

FITCH v. LANCELOT 

F^ Bill (15 July 1641) of Dorothy, the lady Fitch of Woodham Water 
in the county of Essex, widow, relict of Sir William Fitch late of Woodham 
Water, knight, deceased, complainant against Thomas Lancelot of Daneburie, 
co. Essex, butcher. 

Bargains concerning cattle made between the defendant and Sir William 

Fitch, who died 4 Feb. 1 



FLECKER v. FLECKER and others 

Answer (15 Jan. 164^) of Thomas Flecher, William Jakson and 
Thomas Dikes, defendants to the bill of Richard Flecher. 

Concerning the lands of Thomas Flecher of Moorside (Cumberland) 
who died five or six years since. The defendant Thomas Flecher is 
his son and heir by the first wife, and the complainant a son by a 
second wife. 

FREEMAN and others v. CLARKE and others 

F-jij Answer (13 May 1630) of Clement Clarke (of Yelvertoft, North- 
ants, yeoman), one of the defendants to the bill of George Freeman, Sarah 
his wife and Edward Meeres and others. 

Concerning the estate of Edward Marshall, late of Yelvcrtoft, North- 
ants, deceased. 

(See the bill and answer 



FARRINGTON v. FARRINGTON 

F-jij Replication ( ) of Caldwall Farrington to the answer ot 

John Farrington. 

Concerning the indentures of entail of three farms in Alston, Bradley 
and Mitton, co. Stafford, delivered by Thomas Farrington, now dead, 
the eldest brother of the said Caldwall Farrington. 

FLACKE v. TAYLOR 

F-jL Bill (23 Nov. 1644) of John Flack of Wymbish in Essex, yeoman. 
Answer (28 Nov. 1644) of John Taylor. 

Concerning a lease made 14 Feb. 14 Car I. by the compt. to the de- 

fendant of a tenement and lands in Radwinter. 

FYNES v. BARDSEY and another 

F^ Further answer (30 Nov. 1631) of James Bardsey, defendant (with 
one Rolfe) to the bill of Sir Henry Fynes, knight, complainant. 
Money matters. 



86 THE ANCESTOR 

FENTON v. SHALES and another 

F-jL Bill (9 June 1645) of Emanuell Fenton of Hull, gent. 

Answer (17 June 1645) of Henry Shales and Nicholas Wright. 

Replication ( ) of Emanuell Fenton. 

Concerning a sum of 5O/. borrowed by the compt. of one Nicholas 
Bingham on a bond dated 1 8 June 1 7 Jac. I. Nicholas Bingham died 
intestate and Thomas Wright, esquire, father of the defendant Nicholas, 
also died intestate many years since, leaving the said Nicholas Wright 
very young and in charge of his uncle Peter Wright, who was careless 
of his trust, whereby the said Nicholas and the other children of 
Thomas have suffered. Henry Shales was a creditor and is the admor. 
of Nicholas Bingham. He married one of the daughters of Thomas 
Wright. 

FEAST v. DRAPER and others 

FyV Answer (14 Oct. 1645) of Jasper Draper, gent., one of the de- 
fendants to the bill of Robert Feast, complainant. 
Money matters and an indenture of mortgage. William Feast, a son 
of the complainant, is named. 

FENNE v, CHAPMAN and others 

F-jL Answer (zz Oct. 1631) of John Chapman, gent., one of the de- 
fendants to the bill of Joan Fenne, widow. 

Concerning the marriage portion of one Elizabeth Songehurst, a kins- 
woman of Nicholas Burley, who married John Fenne, son and heir of 
Christopher Fenne. One Edmund Songehurst is named as one from 
whom money was due to the said Elizabeth. 

FREEMAN and others v. WARD and another 

F-fL Bill (8 May 1630) of George Freeman of Yelvertoft, Northants, 
yeoman, Sara his wife, Edward Meeres of Yelvertoft, husbandman, and 
Elizabeth his wife. 

Answer (ll May 1630) of Edward Ward (defendant with Clement 
Clarke). 



Edward Marshall of = Henry Marshall 

I Yelvertoft, yeoman I 



Sara, mar. Margaret, d. Elizabeth, mar. Joan, wife two other William 

to George unmarried to Edward of one daus. Marshall 

Freeman about 8 years Meeres about 6 Freeman 

about 5 years since years since 
since 



since 

1 1 



Concerning a deed of Edward Marshall, dated 20 Aug. 15 Jac. I., 
conveying his lands in Yelvertoft to Edward Ward and Clement 
Clark. 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 87 

Fox v. ELLINGTON 

F-j'jy Bill (15 July 1641) of John Fox the younger, an infant, and eldest 
son of John Fox the elder of Warbois, co. Huntingdon, yeoman, by the said 
John Fox his guardian, complainant against Leonard Ellington the elder, of 
Warbois, yeoman, Leonard Ellington the younger, and Gabriel Ellington. 

Concerning the will of Francis Fox of Warbois, dated 29 May 1639, 
who made his wife Lucy and the compt. his exors. Lucy survived 
her husband and died at the feast of the Annunciation last past. Her 
brother Leonard Ellington the elder and his two sons Leonard and 
Gabriel are said to have conveyed away her goods. 



FANN v. LACY and another 

Bill (8 Feb. 164^) of Richard Fann of Dagenham, Essex, black- 
smith, complainant against John Lacy of Rainham, victualler, and Anne his 
wife, and John Bird of Redriffe in Surrey, their kinsman. 

Concerning the estate of Joan Bird of Dagenham, widow, who re- 
married with the compt. Before this marriage the said Joan by in- 
denture dated 2 Jan. 4 Car. I. between herself and Ralph Frith, citizen 
and draper of London, settled her lands in Dagenham upon the said 
Frith in trust to the use of herself and the said Richard Fann. The 
defendant Lacy and his wife claim to be her next heirs. Joan is 
lately dead without issue. 



FRY and others v. ROWSWELL 

FJj Bill (n June 1641) of William Fry of Yarty, co. Devon, esquire, 
Thomas Drake of Wiscombe, esquire, and Thomas Pyne of Axmouth, gent., 
complainants against Sir Henry Rowswell. 

Concerning a lease of messuages and lands in Axminster made 1 6 May 
12 Car. I. by Sir John Drake, knight, now deceased, to the complain- 
ants and to Sir Henry Rowswell, knight. Sir John Drake made a 
will 1 8 Aug. following directing the employment of the rents of the 
premises for the raising of portions for his daughters. A codicil was 
added on 23 August. The said Sir John died leaving six daughters. 
Sir Henry Rowswell now detains the indenture of lease. 



FLEXNEY v. TURNER 

Bill (14 May 1648) of Thomas Flexney of the Inner Temple, 
esquire, compt. against William Turner of Oxford, gent. 

Concerning the lease of a brewhouse in St. Michael's in Oxford. 



FELSTED v. COLE 

Bill (30 May 1644) of Anne Felsted of Saffron Walden, Essex, 
widow, admix, of Thomas Cole, gent., her late father, who died intestate 1 8 






88 THE ANCESTOR 

or 1 9 months since at Saffron Walden, and compt. against William Cole and 
Lettice his wife, Dina Cole, John Cole and Henry Thody. 

Concerning the estate of the said Thomas Cole. The defendants 
William and John Cole are brothers to the compt., and the said Dina 
Cole is her stepmother. 



FAREWELL v. JARRETT alias GARRARD 

Fjij Bill (24 April 1643) of John Farewell of Worplesdon, co. Surrey, 
esquire, compt. against John Jarrett alias Garrard. 

Concerning the alleged detention of the compt. 's horses by the hostlers 
of John Jarrett alias Garrard, host of the White Hart in Tuttle Street, 

Westminster. 



FEILD alias FEILDER and others v. INGLEFEILD and others. 

FJj- Bill ( . . . 1644) of William Feild alias Feilder of Farneham, 
Surrey, yeoman, Robert Greene of West Smithfield, London, farrier, and 
Elizabeth his wife, sister of the said William, compts. against Thomas Inglefeild, 
John Thompson and Robert Thompson, Thomas Pullen, Sarah Paggitt, Edith 
Champe, Thomas Cresheild, esq., John Bristowe, Edmond Heylord, Richard 
Larymore and William Saunders. 

Concerning the estate of Thomas Feild alias Feilder of Eversley, 
Hants, husbandman, deceased, cousin german by the father's side to 
the compts. William and Elizabeth. An earlier bill dated . . . 
October . . . describes the compt. Elizabeth as a spinster of Little 
St. Bartholomew's in London. 



FISHER v. FISHER, and another 

Bill (12 Feb. 164^) of John Fisher of Colchester, sayweaver, compt. 
against Rebecca Fisher and Nicholas Smith. 

The compt. is son and heir of John Fisher of St. James' in Colchester, 
deceased, who died in September, 1642, having given by deed dated 
14 March 164^ all his goods and money in trust to Jonathan Fisher, 
younger brother of the compt. in certain trusts. Rebeccah Fisher, 
relict and extrix. of the said Jonathan, refuses to discharge these trusts. 



FROTHINGHAM v. STOWE 

Bill (20 Nov. 1632) of William Frothingham of Canwicke, Lincoln, 
yeoman, compt. against George Stowe of Stapleford, gent. 

Concerning a settlement of his goods which the compt. made when 
much engaged for other men's debt. The compt. had rents in Lin- 
coln, Canwicke and Waddington in right of his wife. 



A GENEALOGIST'S KALENDAR 89 

FORD v. BENNETT and others 

-& Bill (9 June 1632) of Edward Ford of Ellford, co. Oxford, hus- 
bandman, compt. against Walter Bennett, Richard Tanner and Thomas Wyatt. 
Concerning a leasehold farm in Duckleton, formerly of Richard Ford 
of Duckleton, yeoman, late brother to the compt., who made his will 
about i Car. I. whereof the compt. is exor. 



FREEMAN v. FREEMAN and others 

F-J'J- Bill (10 Feb. i6zf) of William Freeman, citizen and merchant 
taylor of London, on behalf of himself and of John Freeman, an infant, his 
son and heir by Alice his wife, deed., daughter and heir of John Lancaster, 
deed. 

Further answer (28 May 1629) of George Freeman of Coventry, baker, 
William Astell of Coventry, tailor, and Anne Brian, widow, mother of George 
Freeman. 

Concerning messuages in Gore Lane, Gloucester, late of John Freeman 
of Gloucester, M.D., who was seised of them in right of Tacy his wife. 

John Freeman, M.D., = Tacy, dau. of William French 
of Gloucester 



John Freeman, who died 
about 23 year* since 

William Freeman, the compt. 



9 o THE ANCESTOR 



A TALE OF BRISTOL CITY 

THE value of Chancery Proceedings to the genealogist 
must be well known to every reader of the Ancestor ; that 
they may also prove most useful to those who would tell tales 
of our grandfathers it is hoped may be shown by the following 
story of the marriage of Thomas Harvey, a Bristol boy, when 
Charles II. was king. 

In his Petition 1 of 20 November, 1684, Thomas describes 
himself as of Bristol, gentleman, and as an infant approaches 
the Chancellor by his next friend and guardian Daniel Pym of 
Bristol, gentleman. 

' Your Orator about ten years last past came from the Island 
of Nevis to the City of Bristol, being then of very tender 
years' and some time after went to live with Mr. Daniel Pym 
in the said city ' neare to the dwelling house of one John 
Clarke, watchmaker.' Now John Clarke ' understanding that 
your Orator was lately come from Nevis and had a consider- 
able estate ' there * pretended a great kindness to him and con- 
triving and working by such and the like ways and means did 
in or about the months of September and August 1680 take 
your Orator about five miles distance from the City of Bristol 
and by promises of a great portion inveigled him to marry 
Margaret late one of the daughters of the said John Clarke.' 
After this incident he returned to his guardian and was sent 
by him { to schoole in the country whence John Clarke tooke 
him and forced him to table with him ' and the deserted Mar- 
garet, ' and took into his possession the goods of your Orator 
sent over from Nevis in trust, as he said, for your Orator, his 
wife and their children till St. James-tide last year to the value 
of 2,000 and upwards.' But to wait at Bristol for what 
might turn up in ships hailing from Nevis was not enough, and 
' about three years since John Clarke in further prosecution of 
his contrivance to get your Orators estate into his own hands 
persuaded your Orator to entrust his son Samuel Clarke to be 
his factor and go over to Nevis and look after his concerns 
there.' Samuel managed the plantations in Nevis for two 



1 Chan. Proc. befcre 1714: Collins, 531-2. 



A TALE OF BRISTOL CITY 91 

profitable years, but furnished no accounts of his factorship. 
' And now, so please your Lordship, your Orator having 
buried the said Margaret his late wife, and the issue he had by 
her, and being willing to be discharged and live apart from the 
said John Clarke and intending another marriage, which hath 
since taken effect ' hath often ' in a friendly manner ' requested 
the said John and 'Samuel Clarke to give an account of their 
management and all * writings and papers ' belonging to your 
Orator. This they refuse and allege your Orator is indebted 
to them ' for the keeping of horses, dogs and such other frivo- 
lous items ' whereas they know the contrary and have lived 
upon your Orator and his estate. John Clarke also caused 
your Orator to be imprisoned in Bristol and refused to release 
him till he had signed and acknowledged several accounts, and 
threatens him with further actions at law to prevent his voyaging 
to Nevis and hath sent Samuel there again to see what he can 
get for the " confederates." The prayer of your Orator is that 
they may be restrained and forced by Injunction out of this 
Court to give a full account and return all writings and 
evidences.' 

The answer of the * confederates ' headed by John Clarke 
is unfortunately missing ; he however enjoys the privilege of 
a ' further answer ' after the evidence of various witnesses 
has been taken by Commission at Bristol. These depositions 1 
were taken on the i8th April following the petition and the 
witnesses on behalf of the Complainant may be heard first. 

Daniel Pym, aged about forty-nine. His brother, Lieut- 
Col. Pym (military tides flourish with tropical profusion in the 
West Indies) of Nevis, who was one of Complainant's guardians, 
had told him that Thomas' estate there was worth about 400 
a year of English money. Thomas himself first came to Eng- 
land about twelve years since, and ' might then be about five 
or six years of age." In November, 1678, he first came to live 
at this Deponent's house, c who took as much care of him as to 
his tabling and education as he did of his own children.' He 
was about eleven years old when he came, and two years after 
he was married to Margaret Clarke, ' being trepanned and 
taken from School for that purpose as this Deponent verily 
believes.' And the way it happened was thus : Deponent 
c sent him to schoole to one Mr. Owen a schoolmaster in 

1 Chan. Depns. before 1714; 45, n. 



92 THE ANCESTOR 

Bristol in the morning betimes and about eleven of the clock 
the same morning he was inveigled away from school by one 
Mrs. Little,' sister to Mrs. Clarke, and was carried out of 
town by John Clarke to North Stoke to be married to Mar- 
garet. Deponent and a friend rode after them hoping to pre- 
vent the marriage, but on nearing North Stoke were met by 
his ward returning alone. Complainant then told him that 
Clarke had sent for him from school on pretence of riding into 
the country and they had met Margaret at the minister's house 
in North Stoke. Clarke had come provided with a blank 
licence and a ring and c had desired the minister to make all 
the haste he could to marry him and to fill up the licence 
afterward,' having learnt that a country woman who knew 
them had gone into Bristol to warn the guardian. c After the 
marriage Defendant had given him twelve shillings and six- 
pence and bidd him give ten shillings to the minister and half 
a crown to the clarke and promised to buy him a little Gunn 
a watch and a little horse to take his pleasure withal, and that 
he should go no more to school.' He declared he knew not 
what marriage meant ; he did not love his wife or know what 
love was, but acted in childish ignorance. They returned 
together to North Stoke and met the defendant and the bride, 
when Thomas refused to have anything to do with them and 
returned with Deponent to Bristol. 

The bridegroom was then sent to school in Gloucestershire 
about fourteen miles from Bristol, where he stayed for three 
months or so, when Defendant ' with three or four horsemen 
fetched him away by force and took him home to Bristol by 
night ' to his wife. Next he was sent to school in Somerset 
(with his wife) and was there when Margaret Harvey died. 
The general report and talk in Bristol was that ' the Defendant 
had seduced and drawn the Complainant (to the marriage) and 
it was a very base and wicked action of the Defendant.' 
Complainant had since been arrested for debt although ' he 
was then very young and ignorant of business and could 
hardly write his name legibly, and in this Deponent's judge- 
ment was not capable of understanding accounts or any papers 
or writings of that nature.' 

The schoolmaster, who described himself as James Owen 
of Bristol, gentleman, aged about forty-five, deposed : Thomas 
Harvey was aged about fourteen when some six years ago Mr. 
Pym brought him to his school. On the day of the marriage 



A TALE OF BRISTOL CITY 93 

Complainant came to school about eight in the morning and 
about nine Mrs. Little came and asked that he might be 
allowed to go with her nephew Charles Clarke to Horfield 
c to see a child at nurse.' At eleven a servant of Mr. Pym's 
came and enquired for him. At that time complainant was a 
mere child and of little understanding, and in common report 
' Mr. Clarke was to be blamed in that matter and it was very 
idly done of him to marry his daughter with such a child.' 

Thomas Woodward of Bristol, victualler, aged about forty- 
six. Complainant inherited at the death of his father Bartho- 
lomew Harvey plantations in Nevis ' reputed to be worth 
40,000 Ibs. weight of sugar by the year clear of all reprises and 
are so worth in this Deponent's judgement he having been in 
Nevis.' Thomas Harvey came to England about ten years 
ago, and some years after lived for some months at Mr. Pym's 
in Bristol, and was ' as carefully and respectively educated at 
the said Mr. Pym's as any of his own children.' On the day 
of the marriage Mr. Pym hearing of the journey to North 
Stoke and its object ' was in a great rage that the Complainant 
should be so trepanned out of his custody and tuition and 
thereupon with some friend of his immediately took horse 
and rode out of town after them, intending to prevent the 
marriage.' ' In this Deponent's hearing Mr. Pym asked the 
Complainant whether he would go home with him or to his 
father-in-law's. The Complainant thereupon called John 
Clarke old knave or to that effect and refused to go to the 
said Defendant's house, but declared he would go home with 
the said Mr. Pym, and accordingly went with him. Com- 
plainant had often complained of Defendant's ill usage towards 
him and that he was drawn in and inveigled to marry his 
daughter and that he knew not what he did when he was 
married and often repented thereof.' 

After the marriage for about two years Harvey's estate was 
managed by the Defendant, who received all profits, and Samuel 
Clarke after going to Nevis sent his father several parcels of 
sugar. 

About two years ago Complainant came to him to ' put up ' 
75 for him, saying that if Clarke got hold of the money he 
would never see a farthing of it. Deponent refused to take the 
money but allowed him to lock himself in another room. 
Presently after Samuel Clarke came and enquired for Com- 
plainant, and was shown the door of the room he was in. On 

G 



94 THE ANCESTOR 

Samuel's declaring ' with many oaths and protestations that 
neither he nor his father would meddle with the said money 
Complainant opened the door.' Some time after Defendant 
himself came into the room, and after much disputing and 
struggling with the Complainant took the bag of money from 
him by force and carried it away. 

About eighteen months ago a writ was obtained against 
the Complainant to prevent him leaving the kingdom, and 
report was that it was obtained by Defendant to prevent him 
going to Nevis. 

Samuel Clarke soon after went to Nevis and, he had heard, 
was under restraint there not to leave the island till he had 
given an account of his former management. ' He has never 
heard that Complainant did abscond or hide for debt, and he 
did always and yet doth live in good reputation.' 

Sir John Knight of Bristol, knight, aged about forty, and 
John Jones, of the same, merchant, about forty-six, are witnesses 
as to the age of the youthful husband. The former was at the 
house of Bartholomew Harvey in Nevis in December 1665, 
when he understood a son had been lately born to his host, 
and again in 1677 being in Nevis and in company with the 
Governor and other gentlemen he heard that Captain Harvey's 
son was in England and was the only child living when Captain 
Harvey died, his wife having died in childbed. 

Mr. Jones was at Nevis in 1 673 as master of a Bristol ship ; 
Captain Harvey died possessed of a plantation reputed to be 
worth 200 a year ; he left as guardians to his son, Mr. Wood- 
ward and Mr. Whitney (both since deceased) and Mr. Pym. 
Deponent was desired to bring Mr. Woodward and the 
orphan to England, and they arrived in Bristol in June, 1673. 
Complainant was then a little boy not above the age of seven 
or eight. 

There remains one other important witness for the Com- 
plainant : Nathaniel Driver of Bristol, esquire, aged about 
forty-five. When Deponent was Sheriff of Bristol in 1683, 
Thomas Harvey had been committed to Newgate on the suit 
of John Clarke. Moved by common report that Clarke had 
no just cause Deponent took Complainant out of prison into 
his own house for five or six weeks ; he was not then above 
seventeen years of age and quite incapable of understanding 
accounts. 

The principal and most interesting witness for the Defendant 



A TALE OF BRISTOL CITY 95 

John Clarke is his son Charles, described as of Bristol, mariner, 
aged about twenty-one. His story is : ' The Complainant did 
earnestly court his sister Margaret in her life time in the way 
of marriage and did entreat this Deponent to bring him 
acquainted with her and promised him a reward in case he 
should marry with her and told this Deponent, if it pleased 
God he should be married to her, he (this Deponent) should go 
with him to Nevis and live with him upon his estate.' The 
acquaintance seems to have been made and 'Complainant did 
often in this Deponents hearing entreat her earnestly to marry 
with him and his zeal was such in the prosecution of his suit 
that he did several times make his escape through Mr. Pym's 
gutter window to get into his father's house and to come into 
Margaret's company to court her.' Deponent then went on 
to tell how they applied to Mr. Bradford of North Stoke for 
a licence on 17 August, 1680, and were refused, but that Mr. 
Bradford gave them a letter for his father, the Defendant. On 
reading this letter Clarke asked Complainant ' how long he had 
been in love with his daughter. Complainant answered ever 
since before Christmas. What reason had he to have a love 
for his daughter more than anybody else ? ' * He had the 
more kindness for his daughter for that he hoped the Defendant 
would stand his friend and be the more careful in looking after 
his estate that he might not be wronged as he was told he had 
been by Mr. Daniel Pym and his brother.' The next morning 
' at eight o'clock Complainant came and met Defendant at the 
White Horse Inn without Lawfords Gate where this Depon- 
ent saw them riding away together.' He heard his father say 
to Complainant ' he heard he had a pretty estate and it may 
be expected he would give his daughter a portion suitable but 
he could not for he had several children to provide for.' 
Complainant replied, ' I expect none but desire you will be my 
friend to assist me to look carefully after my estate in Nevis.' 
About four months after the marriage, on the very night that 
Defendant fetched him home to his wife, Complainant told this 
Deponent, that as he was coming home on his marriage day to 
Bristol, Mr. Pym c met him and whipped him with his horse 
whip telling him that if he would not go back again to the 
minister and say the words back again which he said to the 
minister about his marriage he would stab him or kill him and 
leave him in a ditch where nobody should know what was 
become of him.' 



96 THE ANCESTOR 

The Defendants did always carry themselves very lovingly 
and kindly to the Complainant who would frequently remark 
' the Defendants were the best friends he had in the world.' 
Samuel Clarke gave up a post in the Search-Office of Bristol 
Custom House worth 50 a year to go to Nevis, and to fit 
him for the voyage his father borrowed 40, and at Nevis 
1 Samuel did take all the imaginable care to settle (the estate) 
and hath gone through abundance of trouble about it having 
been arrested seven times in one day as this Deponent hath 
been informed.' 

Complainant was not a nice brother-in-law, and was ' much 
addicted to gaming and to take idle courses and keep idle 
company and hath spent a great deal of money in drinking 
and gaming sometimes to the value of twenty shillings at a 
time and sometimes would play for his clothes off his back,' 
and Defendants were always ready with good advice. 

William Hill of North Stoke, weaver, aged about forty- 
eight, was present at the marriage in North Stoke Church of 
' one Thomas Harvey to Margaret Clarke by Mr. George 
Bradford, the minister there' on 18 August, 1680. Besides 
Deponent Mr. John Franckham and John Clarke were present. 
Mary Kite, aged about fifty-four, widow of William Kite 
of Swinford in Bitton, co. Gloucester. Complainant came 
with Charles Clarke to her house at Swynford on Monday, 
17 August, 1680, Margaret Clarke being already there, having 
come the day before. They all went to the minister's house, 
but Mr. Bradford refused to give them a licence, and so com- 
plainant rode away to Bristol and returned next day. 

John Francom of Swinford, clothworker, aged about seventy- 
five, also went on 17 August to help ask for a licence. In reply 
to Mr. Bradford's questions Complainant said he was about 
fifteen years of age, but had no parents or relations. 

The next Deponent is William Radford of Marksbury, co. 
Somerset, clerk, aged about thirty-six. ' Defendants did 
carry themselves very lovingly and kindly to the Complainant 
after his intermarriage and provide for him all things neces- 
sary both for meate, drinke and apparell fit for any person 
whatsoever of his quality, and did place him to this Deponent 
to be taught the Latin tongue, writing and arithmetic.' He 
never heard him complain in the least of the want of anything 
and (this Deponent) ' did use his utmost endeavour to instruct 
him and induce him to learn by fair persuasion without using 



A TALE OF BRISTOL CITY 97 

any rigour or violence towards him because he was married.' 
So sensible was Complainant of all this kindness that ' he de- 
sired this Deponent to indite a letter of thanks for him to the 
Defendants, which this Deponent did and Complainant after- 
wards transcribed the same with his own hand and sent it to 
the Defendants and the letter now produced is the same ' 
(there is, alas ! no copy of this original composition). He 
agreed to take Complainant and his wife for 24 a year for 
board and schooling, and received 18 for three-quarters of a 
year. 

Mary Peacocke, who had reached the age of sixteen in 
John Clarke's house without marrying, describes Thomas' 
later relations with his father-in-law. Defendants did all along 
carry themselves lovingly and friendly to Deponent, ' few 
merchants' sons in Bristol went better than he did.' ' On 
Monday morning Defendant paid Complainant five shillings, 
commonly on Tuesdays or Wednesdays following he wanted 
more money and had it and so continued craving for more 
every week and was supplied with it.' Once on his mother- 
in-law, Alice Clarke, remonstrating, he replied, ' What is it to 
you if I spend a hundred pounds a year, you can but be paid 
and if you will have any interest for it you shall and the rest 
will be left for me for I have no body to take care of but my- 
self (his wife being dead). ' 

The other witnesses deal with the business relations be- 
tween John Clarke and his youthful son-in-law. John Horton of 
Bristol,igentleman, forty-nine years of age (who acted as attorney 
for Clarke) described how when Complainant was arrested Clarke 
had become bail for him. Mr. Clarke's account of 26 Novem- 
ber, 1683, showing 100 3-f. 6%d. due to him from Thomas 
Harvey, was acknowledged by Complainant (then in prison) 
to be true ; indeed ' he did spontaneously and with much 
freedom and seeming satisfaction approve of and consent to 
the same.' 

In spite of this marked approval the bill was not paid, 
and this Deponent was instructed by John Clarke to take 
action in the Bristol Courts, when by writ of Habeas Corpus 
the case was removed to the Court of King's Bench. 

William Prichard of Bristol, gentleman, had also been 
retained by Clarke to proceed against the Complainant. 
Deponent knew Margaret Harvey, and she died in 1682. 
Defendants were always very loving and kind to Complainant, 



98 THE ANCESTOR 

and the latter had endeavoured ' to go privately beyond sea 
and by that means avoid payment.' 

Francis Little of Bristol, goldsmith, aged about thirty- 
three (was he the husband of Mrs. Clarke's sister ?) deposes 
that at the end of April or beginning of May, 1683, Com- 
plainant came to his house and showed him the account of 
money due from him to John Clarke, only objecting to an 
item of 8 odd ; and afterwards meeting him in the street 
found him quite satisfied on that item also. 

The Further Answer, 1 dated 5 July, 1685, of John Clarke 
may be taken as a summary of points in his favour. 

He never knew what estate Complainant was possessed of 
when he came from Nevis, and he first became acquainted 
with him on 17 August, 1680, when (Complainant) 'being 
desirous to marry this Defendant's daughter he did present to 
this Defendant that he had an estate in Nevis to the value of 
200 yearly.' He had received for Harvey only the goods 
set down in the account. Samuel went to Nevis for the sake 
of relationship alone, Complainant being most anxious for him 
to go, and he had to give up a most advantageous preferment 
with a merchant in Bristol. As regards papers he has none 
except a will of the Complainant's since revoked and that 
Samuel has. In conclusion he begs to call the attention of 
the Court (and Posterity) to the account annexed. 

The famous account is very long and very detailed, and is 
headed ' Mr. Thomas Harvey Accompt Debtor since the i4th 
February as followeth 1680,' and extends from the said 
St. Valentine's day, i68f, when the Harveys began their 
married life together, to 29 October, 1683, when it is to be 
presumed that Thomas was taken to prison. Unfortunately, 
though Mr. Clarke has carefully recorded every penny spent 
and provided against a treacherous memory by an extra ^40, 
yet he has given no dates. The most common items recorded 
are 'to you in money U., to you more is.' (seldom as much 
as the 55. detected on Mondays by Mary Peacocke's sharp 
eyes). A few other items taken at random are, 'A pair of 
Boots and spurs at the seacond hand 55. 6*/.,' ' an inke home 
5</.,' 'a knife 8^.,' ' to a viall inn i/., 'to a woman doctris for 
fissicke for you 5^.,' 'to the Heyer of A horse is. 8^/.,' ' to 
Birdlime 4^.,' ' to a fann 3.?.,' ' to 2 bottls of whight win and 

1 Chan. Proc. before 1741 : Collins, 281. 



A TALE OF BRISTOL CITY 99 

one claret 2j.,' ' to oysters 4^.,' ' to a liver for his dogg 2</.' 
Very little money seems to have been spent on poor Margaret 
till the detailed expenses of burying her and her child are 
reached. The largest items are 4.0 for Samuel's outfit for 
Nevis and the 40 make-weight referred to above, and the 
total is 320 5.?. 6%d. Against this is set off by sugar, 
220 2s. y and we take our leave of Mr. John Clarke hunger- 
ing for the balance, 100 35. d\d. 

BOWER MARSH. 



ioo THE ANCESTOR 



THE WILL OF ROBERT DEVEREUX 
EARL OF ESSEX 

IN the name of God amen. The sixe and twentieth daie of 
Julie in the yeare of our Lord God one thowsand five hun- 
dred foure score and eleaven 1 and in the three and thirtieth 
yeare of the raigne of our Soveraigne Ladie Elizabeth by the 
grace of God Queene of England Fraunce and Ireland defender 
of the faithe &c. I Robert Earle of Essex and Ewe Viscount 
Hereford and Bourgcher Lord Ferrers of Chartleigh, Lord 
Bourgcher and Lovayne Knight of the most noble order of 
the garter Master of her Majesties horse and Captaine generale 
& Conductor generall of her Majesties forces and armye as 
well horsemen as footmen nowe to be sent into the Realme of 
Fraunce and of all her Majesties forces in Normandy and else- 
where under the leadinge of S r Roger Williams Knight for the 
assistance of the most Christian Kinge Henry the fourthe 
Kinge of the French & of Navarr Remembring that in the 
daungerous enterprises and exploites of warrs the tyme & howre 
of deathe is ordinarilie subiect to many extraordinarie kindes 
of hazardes at the will of Almightie God to call such as him 
pleaseth to his favourable mercye out of this transitorie life 
being in good and perfect healthe (thanckes therefore to Al- 
mightie God) doe ordaine and make my testament and last will 
in manner and forme followinge First I commend and bequeathe 
my soule to God and my bodie to be buried without more 
ceremonie or charge then Christian duetie shall require And for 
recompence and due satisfaction to be made to all & singuler 
persons whome I have in my life tyme trespassed injuriouslie 
hindered or endammaged. My minde and will is that everie 
person and persons against whome I have done or committed 
any trespasse iniurious hinderaunce or damage upon due proofe 
thereof produced before my welbeloved freindes S r Christo- 
fer Hatton Knight of the most noble order of the gartier Lord 
Chauncellor of England William Lord Burleigh Knight of the 
saide order Lord highe Threasurer of England and Master of 

1 Robert second Earl ol Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, was beheaded 
on Tower Hill 25 February, 1601. It will be observed that this unlucky 
will remained unproved until 17 June, 1616. 



THE WILL OF ROBERT DEVEREUX 101 

her Majesties Courte of Wardes and liveries Henry Earle of 
Huntington Lord Hastings Hungerford Botreux Molynes and 
Moiles Knighte of the saide order lord President of her 
Majesties Counsell established in the Northe parte, Charles 
Lord Howard of Effingham knight of the saide order Lord 
Admirall of England, Henry Baron of Hunsdon, Knight of 
the saide order Lord Chamberlaine of her Majesties howsholde 
and Justice of the Forrests and chases on thisside Trent 
Arthure Lord Graye, Robert Lord Rich, Thomas baron of 
Buckhurst knight of the saide order, S r Frauncis Knollys knight 
Threasurer of her Majesties housholde Frauncis Hastings 
Esquire Walter Hastings Esquire S r Gilbert Gerrard knight 
Master of the Rolles S r Drue Drury, S r Robert Jermyn S r John 
Harrington Sir William Knollys S r Edward Littleton S r Robert 
Cecill Knightes Thomas Owen sergeant at lawe, Thomas Eger- 
ton Esquire her Majesties sollicitor, John Brogrove attorney of 
the Dutchie of Lancaster, Robert Beale Esquire Secretarie of 
her Majesties counsaile established in the Northe partes, 
Richard Bagott Thomas Conisbye Francis Bacon Richard 
Broughton Thomas Crompton Edward Lewknor William 
Agarde, John Stidman Robert Wright and Gellye Merricke 
Esquier and thexecutor named in this my testament or any five 
of them shalbe fullie satisfied or recompensed accordinge to 
the quantitie of th' offence hindrance iniurie wronge or damage 
by me done and respectinge the estate and habilitie of everie 
such person to whome I have used any such dammage iniurie and 
wronge Also for and in consideracion that all the legacies and 
bequests of chattells and sommes of money mencioned in this 
my last will and testiment and the schedule thereunto annexed 
and also all the debtes of mee the saide Earle maybe duelie per- 
formed paide and satisfied accordinge to the purport and true 
meaninge of this my testament I will devise and bequeathe to 
my saide welbeloved freindes S r Christofer Hatton Knight 
William Lord Burghley Erie of Huntington Charles Lord 
Howard Henry Baron of Hunsdon Arthure Lord Graye 
Robert Lord Rich Thomas Lord Buckhurst S r Frauncis Knollys 
Knight Frauncis Hastings Walter Hastings S r Gilbert Gerrard 
S r Drue Drury S r Robert Jermyn, S r John Harrington, S r 
William Knollys S r Edward Littleton S r Robert Cecill Thomas 
Owen Thomas Egerton John Brograve Robert Beale Richard 
Bagott, Thomas Conisbie Frauncis Bacon Richard Broughton 
Thomas Crompton Edward Lewknor William Agard John 



102 THE ANCESTOR 

Stidman Robert Wright and Gellye Merricke and the survivors 
and survivor of them all those my lordship and manners of 
Chartleigh and Parkes of Chartley wth th' appurtenaunces in 
the Countie of Stafford And all my landes tenements and 
hereditaments wth th' appurtenaunces whatsoever in Weston 
upon Trent Gayton Amberton alias Ambrighton Trodeswall 
Gratewich Grinley Dreynton alias Dreington Lee Huxston 
Heywood the great Heywood the lesse and Newe Castle under 
Lyme and elsewhere in the Countie of Staff. And all those my 
Lordshipps and manners of Webley and Byford wth th' appur- 
tenaunces in the Countie of Hereford And all my landes tene- 
ments and hereditaments in Webley Bynford Kingstone Hide- 
feildes Pewen and the Cittie of Hereford And all other tene- 
ments knightes fees and hereditaments to the said Lordshippes 
and manners or either of them belonginge or apperteyninge or 
accepted or reputed as part parcell or member thereof And all 
those my Lord shipps Seigniories and Manners of Lantesey 
alias Lantisey Monckton and the Priorie of Monckton and 
Talbennyand thadvowson of the Churche of Talbenny And all 
that my parte and propertie of the Lorshipps and manners of 
Hodgeston alias Hodgerston and Langome And of thadvow- 
sons of the Churches of Hodgeston alias Hodgerston and Lan- 
gome and the park of Lantfey alias Lantesey with th' appurten- 
ances in the Countye of Pimbrooke And all and singuler the 
landes tenements knightes fees advowsons tithes oblacions ob- 
vencions hereditaments liberties franchesies, leetes viewes of 
Franke pledge wrekes of the sea, waifes, estrayes, preheminences 
and emoluments whatsoever of me the saide Erie in the townes 
villages hamletts parrishes and territories of Lantefey alias Lan- 
tesey Hodgston alias Hodgerston Estportclue and Westport- 
clue Stonehall in Dewyland, Llisfrane Walterton Raymercastle 
Bartholwy Hillefeild Guilford Donaston Wolsdale, Loweferas- 
thorpe, Westfeild Williamston, Houghton Moore Lanyon 
Westlangome Westhoke and Easthoke Bradmore Talbenny 
and Howlieston Lambston Mounkton Pembrooke Nangle 
Hundleton Maylardston Haroldston Saint Tonnells Saint Pat- 
rocke Stackpoll Borsieston Castellton Orielton Bangeston 
Lamell and Pennarth and Elsewhere in the Countie of Pem- 
brooke which were in the inheritaunce of Walter Earle of Essex 
deceased my Father And all that my Lordshipp and mannor 
of Wanstede wth thappurtenances in the Countie of Essex 
And all my lands tenements parkes free warrens liberties 



THE WILL OF ROBERT DEVEREUX 103 

commodities franchesies and hereditaments whatsoever in the 
Countie of Essex wth their appurtenaunces, to thentent and 
purpose that they and the survivors of them and th'executors 
of the survivor of them shall imploye and bestowe the rents 
issues revenewes and emoluments of the said Lorshipps 
Manners landes tenements and hereditaments before by 
these presentes devised to and for the payment satisfaction 
and performaunce of all my legacies and bequestes of money, 
chattells and annuyties mencioned in this my testament & 
the schedule thereunto annexed And of all and singuler the 
debtes of me the said Earle of Essex accordinge to the tenor 
forme effect and true meaninge of this my testament And for 
the competent and necessarie charges in lawe and otherwise 
for the defence and maintenaunces of the possession and title 
of all and singuler the premisses and everie or anie part thereof 
And for the reparacions and defence of the buildings edifices 
howses and necessaries competent to be disbursed and expended 
untill such tyme as the said legacies bequests and debtes of me 
the saide Earle shall be performed, and untill some heire of me 
the saide Earle of Essex shall have accomplished the full age of 
twentie and twoe yeares, and after my saide legacies debtes and 
bequests soe paied satisfied and performed and for the sur- 
plusage that shall surmounte the saide debtes legacies and 
annuities to the use and profitt of the then heire of me the 
said Earle of Essex and of the heires of the same heire untill 
some one heire of me the said Earle shall have accomplished 
th' age of twentie and twoe yeares And I will devise and be- 
queathe that after all and singuler the legacies and bequests 
and debtes of me the saide Earle mencioned in this my tes- . 
tament and the schedule thereunto annexed shalbe satisfied 
and performed And after that some heire of me the said 
Earle shall have accomplished the full age of twentie and 
twoe yeares All and singuler the saide Lordshipps manners 
landes tenements and other the premisses whatsoever with 
theire appurtenaunces shall remaine accrue and come to Robert 
Lord Hereford my son and heire apparante and the heires 
males of his bodie lawfullie begotten And for defaulte of 
such heires shall remaine and come to the heires males of 
my bodie lawfullie begotten And for defaulte of such heires 
shall remaine and come to Walter Devereux, brother of me 
the saide Earle and the heires males of his bodie lawfullie 
begotten And for defaulte of such heires shall remaine and 



104 THE ANCESTOR 

accrue to the heires of my bodie lawfullie begotten And for 
defaulte of such heirs shall remaine accrue and come to the 
heires of the bodie of my saide Father lawfullie begotten and 
for defalt of such heires shall remaine and come to the 
right heires of me the saide Erie of Essex for ever and more- 
over for And in consideracion of a good perfect and certaine 
estate to be conveyed assured and assigned to my right wel- 
beloved wife the Ladie Frauncis Countesse of Essex for terme 
of her naturall life for and in the name of her joyncture and in 
liew and full recompence of the dower and title of dower of 
and in all and singuler my honors castells lordshipps manners 
landes tenements and hereditamentes with th' appurtenaunces 
to her accrueing by and after my decease I the saide Earle of 
Essex doe will devise and bequeath by this my present testa- 
ment to my saide wife all those my Lordshippes and manners 
of Bicknor Teinton and Dymock wth th' appurtenaunces in the 
Countie of Gloucester and of and in all that the Monastery 
Lordshipp Manner and capitall messuage of Meryvale in the 
Counties of Warwicke and Leicester and all the scite precinct 
ambite and circuite of the said late dissolved Monasterie of 
Meryvale and all that parke and ympaled groundes with deare 
therein called Meryvale Parke And all those granges called 
Newhowse grange and Pynwall grange wth th' appurtenaunces 
and all messuages howses buildinges edifices toftes curtilages 
mylles gardens orchardes fishe pondes and groundes covered 
with water landes meadowes pastures leasowes pastures feed- 
ings woodes and wood groundes rents revercions services 
moores heathes firses wast groundes piscaryes commons leetes 
viewes of Frankepledge waifes estraies liberties franchesies 
priviledges commodities and emoluments whatsoever of me 
the saide Erie in Meryvale Atherston Mancester Hartshull 
Whittington Baxterley Bentley Wilmcote Newhouse Punwale 
and ellswhere in the counties of Warwick and Leicester parcell 
of the possessions of the said late dissolved monasterie of 
Meryvale And alsoe all that Lord shipp Seignorie and manner 
of Llanthomas alias Saint Thomas Churche with th' appurten- 
aunces in the countie of Brecknock^ and all landes tenements 
liberties courtes leetes viewes of Frankepledge franchesies waiffes 
estrayes free warrens jurisdictions preeminences commodities 
emoluments and hereditaments of me the saide Earle of Essex 
in the parrishes towneshippes hamletts and territories of Llan- 
thomas alias Saint Thomas Churche and Haye alias Gelly in 



THE WILL OF ROBERT DEVEREUX 105 

the said Countie of Brecknocke To have and to houlde to my 
saide wife for terme of her natural! life for and in the name of 
the joyncture of my saide wife and in full satisfaction of her 
dower and title of dower And after the decease of my saide 
wife and duringe the time that Robert Lord Hereford my said 
sonne and heire apparaunt or any other beinge myne heire shalbe 
under the age of twentie and twoe yeares I will and bequeathe 
that my saide freindes and the survivors and survivor of them 
and th' executors of the survivor of them shall take receive 
levie possesse use and enjoye the rents yssues profitts revenues 
commodities and emoluments of all and singuler the said Lord- 
shipps manners landes tenementes and hereditaments before to 
my saide wife devised and the same imploye duringe such tyme 
as some heire of me the saide Earle of Essex shalbe under age 
of twenty and twoe yeares for and towardes the performaunce 
payment and satisfaction of all my legacies and bequestes of money 
and chattells mencioned in this my testament and the schedule 
thereunto annexed and debtes of me the said Earle accordinge 
to the purport and true meaninge of this my testament and 
for and towardes the payment and satisfaction of all charges in 
lawe and otherwise necessarie or convenient to be disbursed 
and bestowed for and aboutes the maintenaunce defence and 
suite in lawe of and for all and singuler the premisses everie 
or anie part thereof and for the reparacions defence and amend- 
ment of all and singuler the premisses and everie or any part 
thereof And after satisfaction of the said legacies debtes anuy- 
ties and charges and for the surplusages that shall surmounte 
the same debtes legacies annuities and charges to thentent and 
purpose that my said friends S r Christofer Hatton Knight and 
th' others aforenamed and the survivors and survivor of them 
th' executors of the survivor of them shall imploye and suffer 
the profitts emoluments yssues revenues and commodities of 
and in the said Lordshipps manners landes tenements and 
hereditaments and the surplusage thereof to remain and accrue 
to the use benefitt and profitt of the then heire and heires of 
me the saide Earle of Essex and after the deathe of my said 
wife and after all and singuler my legacies to be mencioned in 
this my testament and schedule therunto annexed and my 
debtes shalbe paid or contented And after the saide Robert 
Lord Hereford my sonne or some heire of me the saide Earle of 
Essex shall have accomplished the full age of twentie and twoe 
yeares I will devise and bequeathe that the said Lordshipps 



106 THE ANCESTOR 

manners landes tenements and hereditaments before devised 
to my said wife in this my testament shall remaine and come 
to my said sonne Robert Lord Hereford and the heires males 
of his bodie lawfullie begotten And for defaulte of such heires 
males the same premisses shall remaine and come to the heires 
males of the bodie of me the saide Earle of Essex And for 
defaulte of such heires the same premisses shall remaine and 
come to my brother Walter Devereux and the heires males of 
his bodie lawfullie begotten And for defaulte of such heires 
the same premisses shall remaine and come to the heires of my 
bodie lawfullie begotton And for defaulte of such heires the 
same premisses shall remaine and come to the heires of Walter 
Earle of Essex my father And for defaulte of such heires shall 
remaine and come to the right heires of me the saide Earle of 
Essex for ever And furthermore I leave to discend and come 
to myne heire in course of inheritaunce according to the lawes 
of this Realme the manners ofNewington Clifton and Braifield 
wth th' appurtenances in the Countie of Bucks, the manners 
of Penkelly andPiperton with th'appurtenaunces in the Countie 
of Brecknock the manners of Bodenham Devereux and Wood- 
house wth the appurtenaunces in the Countie of Hereford all 
which premisses before lymmitted to descend to my heire are a 
full thirde part of all and singuler my manners landes tene- 
mentes and hereditaments And touchinge the disposicion of 
my goodes Jewells and houshold stuffe I will and bequeathe 
that my saide wife the Countesse of Essex shall have for her 
necessarie use all and singuler such Jewells plate ymplements 
of houshold and howshold stuffe which my saide wife nowe 
useth and possesseth And for the residoue of my goodes and 
chattells I give will and dispose the same as shalbe conteyned 
in the schedule hereunto annexed And for the performaunce 
of this my last will and testament I make my executor my 
saide sonne Robert Lord Hereford my sonne and heire appa- 
rant to whome I will and bequeathe all my goodes and chattells 
other then the legacies and bequestes in this my testament and 
the schedule thereunto annexed to others devised which 
schedule hereunto annexed being subscribed with my owne 
hand and my will and minde is shalbe taken reputed and ad- 
judged as part and parcell of this my testament and as thoughe 
the same were before in this my testament expressed and 
declared. In witnes whereof I have putte my scale yeoven the 
daie and yeare first above written. R : Essex Signed and 



THE WILL OF ROBERT DEVEREUX 107 

sealed in the presence of Robert Beale, Richard Broughton, 
R : Wright. 

Probatum fuit testamentum suprascriptum apud London 
coram venerabili viro Commissario Johanne Benet milite legum 
doctore Curie Prerogative Cantuariensis Magistro Custode 
sive Commissario legitime constituto decimo septimo die men- 
sis Junij Anno Domini Millesimo Sexcentesimo decimo sexto 
Juramento prenobilis et honorandi viri Roberti Comitis Essex 
iilij naturalis et legitimi dicti defuncti et executoris in hujus- 
modi testamento nominati Cui commissa fuit administratio 
omnium et singulorum bonorum jurium et creditorum dicti 
defuncti de bene et fideliter administrando eadem ad sancta 
Dei Evangelia vigore comissionis jurati. COPE, 70. 



[The styles adopted in formal documents, and especially in their wills, by 
Elizabethan nobles are often worthy of notice (see Ancestor, iv. 8 1 6). The 
Earl of Essex here styles himself also Earl of Ewe, Viscount Bourchier, and 
Lord Bourchier, the first two of which tides had become extinct so far back as 
1539 on the death of Robert Bourchier, Earl of Essex, whose sister and 
eventual heiress married John Devereux, Lord Ferrers of Chartley. The 
earldom of Ewe was really the Norman countship of Eu. The style assumed 
by him of Lord Lovayne is also of interest. His claim to it was through the 
marriage of his ancestor Sir William Bourchier with Eleanor daughter and 
heir of Mathew de Lovaine who was summoned to Parliament by the doubt- 
ful writ of 22 Edward I. The same style of Lord Lovaine was allowed to 
his descendant in the Patent creating the earldom of Leicester in 1 784, 
though a new barony of Lovaine had been bestowed on the Percy family only 
four months before. The barony of ' Moiles ' assigned by the earl to Lord 
Huntingdon is that of Moels of which he was only a co-heir. J. H. R.] 



io8 THE ANCESTOR 



ENGLISH COSTUME OF THE EARLY 
FOURTEENTH CENTURY 

THESE beautiful illustrations of costume are borrowed 
from a manuscript now in the British Museum (Royal 
MS. 19 B. xv.). The manuscript is an English one, the 
apocalypse of St. John written in French with pictures by 
English hands. 1 

Its date is probably of the beginning of the fourteenth 
century. Those who compare with these pictures the draw- 
ings of the Matthew Paris MS. figured in vol. v. of the Ancestor 
will note but slight change of fashion. The great helm of 
plate xiii is the most noteworthy arrival amongst the 
military novelties. This is the helm which appears about 
1280 in its early form, and it is the helm so often seen upon 
the seals of this period, of which many and the finest examples 
are given in the series accompanying our article upon the 
barons' letter to the pope. The coif of mail and prick spurs 
are still the common wear of the knight, and strange to re- 
late, military fashion in England has gone backward in one 
particular, if we may trust these pictures, for the bainbergs or 
greaves shown upon the legs of some knights of the Matthew 
Paris MS. have disappeared in this later series, in which the 
knee-cop stands for the only visible plate. The broad-brimmed 
iron hat is frequent, but the plain skull-cap and the hood of 
mail without further covering are still common. The mail 
hawberk is well seen without the concealing coat in more than 
one place. 

Civil dress is still very simple in spite of the buttons and 
partly-coloured finery of plate xii. For this artist, gloves would 
seem to be clerks' wear. Many varieties of head-dress appear, 
a hat of soft stuff with the edge turned over being most fre- 
quent. The coif is worn by clerk and layman. Grave elders 
still wear the long gown and long cloak of the Matthew Paris 

1 Plate ix. showing a coarser touch, differs from the delicate work of the 
others. 



FOURTEENTH CENTURY COSTUME 109 

pictures. The necks of coats and gowns are cut low, the 
wrists close, and the upper arm of the sleeve is not so loose 
as in the earlier series. Women's dress begins to return to 
fine fashions ; in that of the lady with the golden cup of 
abominations we see the beginning of the curious fashion of 
the gown or coat open at the sides. 

O. B. 



no THE ANCESTOR 



I 

The crowned rider on the white horse interests us mainly 
by reason of the longbow in his left hand, a bow of true 
English proportions and seemingly as long when unstrung as 
the height of a man. His short coat is green and the hooded 
cloak of three-quarter length is reddish and lined, as it seems, 
with red and white fur. His hosen are white with small red 
bars and he sits in a green saddle. 




THK RIDER ON THE WHITE HORSE. Rev. vi. 2. 



ii2 THE ANCESTOR 



II 

The rider upon the red horse is armed with a great sword 
of hand-and-a-half or bastard character. As he wears no 
cloak the simple and loosely-fitting coat, hanging to the knee 
and girdled with a narrow girdle, is clearly seen. The sleeves 
show little change in a half-century save that the great armhole 
and consequent fulness of the upper sleeve has all but dis- 
appeared. The forearm and wrist are tightly covered and the 
neck is low. Here the coat is reddish and the hosen a dull 
blue. The other figures, the angel excepted, show like coats. 
The two striving with swords and the swordsman slitting the 
throat of the spearman have green coats and the fourth and 
fifth white coats, the fifth with a green cloak over it. One 
wears a short tippet of fur. Their hosen are white with black 
shoes, and the hats are white turned up with green. 




TUB RIDER ON THK RED HOKSK. Rev. vi. 4. 



n 4 THE ANCESTOR 



III 

The rider on the black horse is armed with a short javelin 
or dart. His green coat is seen under the cloak to be of the 
same character as that of the rider on the red horse, low- 
necked and close-sleeved. The reddish cloak lined with fur is 
pulled over the knees in riding. The hosen are white with 
narrow red bars and short prick spurs are on the heels. It 
will be seen that no boots or shoes are shown. 




THK RIDER ON THE BLACK HORSE. Rev. vi. 5. 



n6 THE ANCESTOR 



IV 

The equipment of the group of knights upon Euphrates 
bank is very clearly shown. They wear, as far as may be 
seen, each a long hawberk of banded mail to the knee, con- 
tinued without visible joinings into mail gloves and close 
hoods of mail. Two of the head-pieces are plain iron hats 
sloping into wide brims, another is perhaps of the same type 
but barred with red lines ; a fourth is a round skull-cap, whilst 
a fifth knight shows one of those curious iron hats of which 
the framework would seem to be iron with an inner cap which 
does not appear as metal, and may be a skull-cap of quilted 
work. In the case before us this inner cap is coloured green. 
A hat of this form is shown amongst the decorations once in 
the painted chamber at Westminster. The legs are unarmed 
and hose of yellowish colour. 




THE LOOSING OF THE FOUR ANGELS WHICH ARK BOUND IS THE GREAT KlVER EUPHRATES. 

Kev. i.\. I.). 



n8 THE ANCESTOR 



The same curious form of the iron hat which we noticed 
in the last plate is seen again in this. Here it shows red 
within the framework. The hawberk worn by the soldiers in 
that plate is also worn by the nearest devilish rider, and ' haw- 
berk ' may be used with assurance to describe this coat of 
banded mail, for baubercbe is the word used in the French 
text below. Over his shoulder he has a short cape of red 
and white fur. His legs seem to be clad in black-grey boots 
over which knee-cops with a rose boss are strapped. 

The artist has unhappily no taste for varied armory and 
little knowledge of an art which his clever fingers could have 
used so much to our instruction. The two banners here are 
alike and each has the unlikely bearing of silver with a green 
fesse between two broad bars or cotises of gold. 

The hat of one of those amongst the horse-hoofs will be 
noted as having the same form as the iron hat. His com- 
panion in woe wears the little coif. 




ON OK R, D KRS u,o.v HORS.S wrn, L.o.v 1I. AUS * 



SKRI . KN ,. T A,u,_Kev. ix. , 7 ., 9 . 



THE ANCESTOR 



VI 

The king hearing the witnesses has a green coat under 
his cloak of pale purplish red. His hosen are white and all 
the shoes here are black, fastening with a strap, as do the 
shoes of our nurseries. The witnesses are clad in gowns of 
the colour of the king's cloak, through which their arms are 
thrust in white sleeves. Under the hoods show tippets or 
linings of fur. Their large gloves have separate fingers, and 
they have small round caps of a grey colour. They are clearly 
clerks. 

The king nurses upon his arm a hand-and-a-half sword 
with a large and round pommel, straight quills of moderate 
size and a blade of mighty length and breadth. Such a sword 
is carried by the knight behind him. The iron-framed hat is 
here white showing green within. The nature of the mail with 
which he is hooded and sleeved is not indicated, but here at 
least we see the fingerless gloves joined at the wrist to the 
sleeve. His large shield hangs by a strap from his neck, 
being red with three golden bars. 




THE TKSTIMONY OK THK VVii.NKs.5Ks. Rev. xi. 3. 



122 THE ANCESTOR 



VII 

The vast swords of the last plate are shown again here, 
and their rounded points may be remarked. The headsman 
has a reddish coat reaching below the knee, the front edge 
being tucked up in his girdle. The king's furred tippet is 
of grey and white fur. The most noteworthy points here are 
the underclothings of the victims. The kneeling clerk with 
the shaven head who awaits martyrdom with such eagerness 
has a shirt low and plain at the neck with short and loose 
sleeves to the elbow and reaching to the knee. Here, and 
upon the headless man on whom the headsman tramples, 
the artist has shown a garment which seems to divide at the 
skirt into short drawers, but he towards whose neck the sword 
is whirling has this shirt clearly slit at the side as is a modern 
shirt. 




THE SOUNDING OF THE SKVKNTH ANGE'- KcV. xi. Ij. 



124 THE ANCESTOR 



VIII 

These two angels, beautiful examples of the English work 
of this period, show, and especially in the case of the one 
upon the reader's left, the long girdled gown with a low neck 
and the long plain cloak which appear so often in the draw- 
ings of the Matthew Paris MS. figured in the fifth volume of 
the Ancestor, 




THE TWO ANCKI.S. 



126 THE ANCESTOR 



IX 

The bodies of those slain by the beast lie about on the 
green field giving us many valuable points. The only indi- 
cations of mail are shown in the skirts of the hawberks of 
the two in the foreground. The coat worn over the hawberk 
is here seen as open at the sides of its skirt. Two of the 
soldiers have knee-cops of a plain character, a third has un- 
armed legs below the hawberk with the black strapped shoes 
of civil dress upon his feet. This man's gloves are of the 
same curious type seen more clearly in the next plate. The 
hindermost of the soldiers has the iron-framed hat. The two 
red shields have the one a golden cheveron between three 
bezants and the other a golden fesse and three bezants. 

The young man dead upon the ground shows the simplicity 
of ordinary English dress at this period. A coif tied under 
the chin, a tunic-coat with tight wrists reaching to the knee 
and girdled at the waist, hosen and strapped shoes go to his 
simple and convenient costume. 




TllF. WORSHIPPING OK TlIK MKVKX-1IKA1>KI> BEAST. Her. Xili. 4. 



128 THE ANCESTOR 



X 

Here we have more victims giving us more views of the 
short and short-sleeved shirt. The row of rivets or studs 
upon the edge of the iron hat will be noticed. The coat has 
wide sleeves to the elbow only and is of purplish white with 
green bars upon it, not, as it would seem, with any armorial 
meaning. The hosen and under-sleeves are reddish and the 
strapped shoes and gloves white. The gloves should be care- 
fully examined : they are high gloves fluted in the portion 
covering the wrist and part of the forearm, which fluting 
probably indicates cotton stuffing or pourpointerie. The glove 
proper is attached to these wristlets with a row of little studs 
or stitchings and the fingers are separate. The huge sword 
has a blade like a straightened falchion. 




HKAST WITH TWO HOKNS 11KE A LAMIi COMING UP OUT OK THE EAKTH. Rev. xiii. II. 



i 3 o THE ANCESTOR 



XI 

Upon the lady with the golden cup of abominations we 
have a singularly interesting example of women's dress. Her 
wimple and kerchief are white, the latter twisted about her 
brows with a falling end after the manner of the liripipe head- 
gear of a hundred years later. Of her undercoat we see the 
grey-black sleeves, loose above the elbow. Her gown has 
the same hue, set off by golden edges at the edge of the long 
and full skirt and at the open armholes which are open from 
shoulder to waist. The long full skirt is worn by the second 
lady, but in this case the sleeves are part of the upper gown, 
and the head, whose hair is carried in a net, is covered by 
a loose kerchief with a long end carried under the chin and 
returned over the shoulder. 

The lady upon the seven-headed beast sits her dread hackney 
in the sidelong fashion, which was not at this date an established 
custom with women riders. 




Tin: U.'.MAN sirn.vo UPON THK SCARLET COI.OURKD UAST. Her. xvu. 3 



132 THE ANCESTOR 



XII 

We have here, it would seem, a group of gaily clad clerks,. 
two with white coifs over their long curled locks and one 
with an ample yellow hood. The long gowns to the ankle 
are party-coloured of green and yellow. The hosen are green, 
the shoes yellow. The gowns end at the elbow with a short 
and wide open sleeve, the close sleeve of an under-garment 
appearing below. Each carries his white gloves in his hand, 
and the row of buttons on the two middle figures is note- 
worthy. 




THK VO|C|.: CKYINC " Co\ll. DOT "I IIKK, MY PEOPLE." 1\CV. XVlii. <( 



i 3 4 THE ANCESTOR 



XIII 

The curious horse-trappers first take the eye in this beautiful 
illustration. The horse is covered with them over his tail 
and over his head to the mouth, the ears being fitted and 
ending each in a round tassel. The foremost knight has the 
great helm of sugarloaf form with crossbarred front, the hinder 
half lapping its edge over the front with a row of rivets. 
All his followers wear coifs and hoods of mail. The coat 
worn over the hawberk falls well below the knee and ends at 
the shoulder. The shields and five banners all bear the arms 
of St. George, which are seen also upon the saddle of the 
knight with the helm. The prick spur and knee-cop are very 
plainly shown. 




THE RIDER ON THE WII1TK ]|KSK KOI.1.OWKII UV THE AKMlKs OK HEAVEN. Uev. xix. 14 



136 THE ANCESTOR 



XIV 

This king and his knights are armed each after the same 
fashion. No helm or iron hat is seen amongst them, the 
knee-cops being the only plates. The coat over the hawberk 
is well seen here, slit for the passage of the arms and slit 
again at the sides of the skirts ; here it is green barred with 
yellow bars with narrow red lines at their edges. Two of the 
white pennons which are of the shape of the isosceles triangle 
have a yellow bar between two green bars, and two a green 
bar between two of yellow, but we have noticed before that our 
artist is weak as to his armory. The hawberks are of the 
usual type, worn to the knee and joined at the wrists to 
fingerless gloves of the same mail. Especial regard should 
be given to the ' broad and studded belts ' in which the 
swords hang, and to the small round buckler of the angel 
who is playing so good a sword. 

O.B. 




THE IIKAST WITH THE KINGS OK THB EARTH AND THEIR ARMIKS. Kev. xix. 19. 



THE COURT OF CLAIMS 1 

A GOOD deal has already been printed concerning the 
recent coronation, its services, ornaments and what-not. 
Mr. Wollaston's work, as his somewhat wordy title page in- 
forms us, contains ' a full report of all the cases argued before 
the Court, with the petitions and judgments ; also an intro- 
ductory chapter on the Court of Claims, a chapter on evidence 
and procedure, a complete tabular list of all the claims existing 
on the Coronation Rolls, a chapter on the Lord Great Chamber- 
lain case before the Committee for Privileges of the House of 
Lords, and other matters.' 

Mr. Wollaston should be peculiarly competent to write 
such a work. He is a grandson of the venerable ' Garter ' 
(to whom the book is dedicated), he was appointed Fitzalan 
Pursuivant Extraordinary for the occasion, while he appeared 
as counsel for several of the petitioners. 

Mr. Wollaston gives us verbatim all the petitions sent in 
to the Court of Claims, the judgments in those cases where 
such was actually given, and in addition a considerable amount 
of the arguments of counsel in support of the various claims. 
It is thus a Coronation Roll of the approved ancient pattern, 
plus the last item. 

The claims may be divided roughly into two classes those 
to services at the coronation ceremony, and those to services 
at the banquet. As there was no banquet the latter class was 
not, strictly speaking, in question, but a considerable number 
of petitions were sent in to be placed on record. Of these the 
most important was that to serve as the Chief Butler of Eng- 
land, claimed by (i) the Duke of Norfolk, in right of his 
earldom of Arundel ; (2) Lord Mowbray and Stourton, as 
the senior coheir of William de Albini, Pinceina or Butler 
to William the Conqueror ; and (3) by Mr. F. O. Taylor, as 
lord of the manor or Kenninghall in Norfolk. In this class 
also falls the petition of Mr. Dymoke of Scribelsby to fill the 
picturesque office of King's Champion. 

1 Coronation of King Edward Vll. The Court of Claims : Cases and Evidence. 
By G. Woods Wollaston, M.A., LL.M., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at- 
Law (London : Harrison & Sons). 



138 THE ANCESTOR 

Perhaps the case exciting the most general interest was 
that relating to the office of Lord Great Chamberlain, for 
which there were four claimants. These were the Duke of 
Atholl, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, the Earl of Ancaster 
and Earl Carrington, who all claimed as representing the 
Veres, Earls of Oxford. The matter was left by the Court 
of Claims to the decision of the Committee for Privileges, 
who decided in favour of the three last claimants jointly. 
Mr. Wollaston gives a very clear account of the points raised, 
and a sheet pedigree from Alberic de Vere, Great Chamberlain 
in 1135. 

Another hard-fought case was that of the right to carry 
the Great Spurs. Here the claimants were Lord Grey de 
Ruthyn, the Earl of Loudoun and Lord Hastings, all of 
whom claimed to represent John de Hastings, Earl of Pem- 
broke, who carried the Spurs by his deputy (be being a minor) 
at the coronation of Richard II. The judgment seems un- 
satisfactory ; the Court is not satisfied as to the hereditary 
nature of the office, and decides that no one of the petitioners 
has established his claim. In the sheet pedigree accompany- 
ing this case we are somewhat surprised to see our old friend 
' the Portgreve of Hastings ' sitting in his wonted pride of 
place at the top ; we thought that he had decently retired to 
the limbo of myths some time ago. 

Another most interesting case is that of the Hereditary 
Standard Bearer of Scotland, an office granted by one of the 
early kings of Scotland to Sir Alexander Carron, who there- 
upon changed his name to Scrymgeour. His last descendant 
in the main line, John, third Viscount Dudhope and first Earl 
of Dundee, died without issue in 1668. In 1670 King 
Charles II., under the impression that Lord Dundee had left 
no heirs male, granted his estates and his office of Standard 
Bearer to Charles Maitland, afterwards Earl of Lauderdale. 
This grant was however subject to a salvo jure cujuslibet ; and 
the Court of Claims, holding that the office is vested in the 
Scrymgeour family, decided in favour of Mr. Henry Scrym- 
geour- Wedderburn, who had established a prima fade title to 
represent that family. A curious bit of history appears in a 
footnote on p. 79. The Duke of Lauderdale, it appears, after 
the grant to his brother in 1 670, broke into the late Earl of 
Dundee's house at Dudhope .and carried off all the family 
papers. Not content with this the duke, it is alleged, pro- 



THE COURT OF CLAIMS 139 

ceeded to tear out of the Register of the Privy Council those 
pages containing the record of the patent of viscounty granted 
to Sir John Scrymgeour in 1641. But the despoiler, whoever 
he was, forgot the index, which still bears witness to the con- 
tents of the lost pages. 

A very remarkable case was the claim of the Walker 
Trustee to exercise the office of Usher of the White Rod of 
Scotland by deputy. It appears that Sir Patrick Walker, who 
held the office in question, bequeathed it to his two sisters and 
coheirs. The last survivor of these, Miss Mary Walker, con- 
veyed the office to a body of trustees, who were incorporated 
by a private Act of Parliament in 1877. This Act expressly 
recognized the validity of the assignment to the trustees, and 
in 1898 the Treasury compounded with them for the salary 
attaching to the office. Under these circumstances the Court 
could not well do otherwise than allow the claim, but the pre- 
cedent seems a very dangerous one. 1 

An air of romance attaches to the claim to be Marshal of 
Ireland. There is first of all a petition from ' James Thorne, 
Lord de Morley, Baron of Rye, and Hereditary Marshal of 
Ireland,' claiming as the descendant and representative of Sir 
William Parker, Standard Bearer to Richard III. The length 
of Irish pedigrees is shown by the allegation that the peti- 
tioner's ancestors have been seised of the Marshalship of 
Ireland ' for all time.' This brought up Mr. George Sackville 
Frederick Lane-Fox with a counter petition. He begins by 
humbly showing 'that a petition has been presented to your 
Majesty by Mr. J. T. Roe, calling himself Baron or Lord de 
Morley,' and claiming to be Marshal of Ireland and Standard 
Bearer. Mr. Lane-Fox claims himself to be one of the co- 
heirs of Thomas Parker, the last Lord Morley and Monteagle. 
' The said Mr. J. T. Roe ' (he asserts), c calling himself Baron 
or Lord de Morley, is not heir or coheir or the Lords de 
Morley, and not heir or coheir to the hereditary office of 
Marshal of Ireland, and that neither Mr. Roe nor the right 
heirs of the Lords de Morley have any hereditary claim to the 
office of Standard Bearer to your Majesty. That the said 
Mr. J. T. Roe petitioned her late Majesty Queen Victoria for 

1 The right of the owner of an hereditary office to alter the nature of its 
descent arose in the Lord Great Chamberlain case. The House of Lords, 
acting on the advice of the Judges, decided (in 1626) that the entail pur- 
ported to be created by the sixteenth Earl of Oxford was invalid. 



1 4 o THE ANCESTOR 

the Barony or title of Lord de Morley, that the said petition 
was referred to the consideration of the then Attorney-General, 
who reported that the said Mr. J. T. Roe had not established 
his right to the dignity. That the said Mr. J. T. Roe subse- 
quently assumed by his own motion and without authority the 
title of Baron or Lord de Morley.' 

Mr. Roe appeared in person and admitted that he had not 
proved his right to the barony before the Committee for Privi- 
leges of the House of Lords. The Court made no order 
upon his petition. 

Mr. Lane-Fox must congratulate himself that his petition 
was addressed to the seventh Edward rather than to the first 
James, otherwise ' the said J. T. Roe ' had certainly made 
a Star Chamber matter of it. For it is on record that Mr. 
Lane-Fox's ancestor, Edward Parker, twelfth Baron Morley, 
and Baron Monteagleyn? uxoris, once invoked the aid of that 
all-powerful Court for a much lighter thing. It chanced to 
fall out that one fine morning in September, 1607, Lord 
Morley, taking the air in Hatfield Chase, met with Sir Henry 
Colt of Colt's Hall, co. Suffolk, his brother, their two men, 
their sister, and a greyhound. The baron, having a ' game of 
deere ' there, very naturally wished to know who these travellers 
were ; to whom Sir Henry Colte, ' not then knowinge him to 
be the Lo. Morlye, made aunsweare, (that) for oughte he knewe, 
he mighte be as good a man as he.' ' After many ill wordes of 
passyon and provocation,' the parties separated with these 
contemptuous salutations, ' God buye, goodman Colte,' and 
c God buye, goodman Morlye.' Sir Henry Colt got off on a 
technical objection to the bill of complaint, for ' uncertainty,' 
but he had a narrow escape, and, perhaps, learned to mend his 
manners. 

Much more might be said in commendation of this very 
useful and interesting work, did space allow. In conclusion, 
may we suggest that the Barons of the Cinque Ports should 
reconsider their statement that ' every hostile landing upon the 
soil of this country, whether by Romans, Danes or Normans, 
was within the limits of the Cinque Ports.' We seem to 
recollect something of Danish landings in Yorkshire and 
Lincolnshire, and there are legends of Hengist in Hampshire. 
We were also under the impression that Edward the Confessor 
died childless, and that he was therefore not the king's 
ancestor, or, indeed, any one else's. 



THE COURT OF CLAIMS 141 

Finally, we cannot resist the temptation to emphasize the 
statements of ' the Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors of the 
Borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in the County 
of Dorset.' 'You are aware' (they begin) 'we are a most 
ancient and loyal Borough, having for many centuries held the 
pre-eminence either as a commercial port, a political power, or 
from our attractions as a sea-bathing and watering place having 
been known from King Athelstan's time down to the present 
moment. At one time we were a Queen's Dowry.' No one, 
we feel sure, would wish to dispute the attractions of the 
Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors in any capacity they may 
choose to assume, however extraordinary, but we have grave 
doubts as to which presents the more remarkable historic 
episode, King Athelstan going down to Dorset to bathe in 
the sea and drink the waters, or a body of very worthy 
gentlemen being solemnly assigned as the dowry of a queen. 

W. PALEY BAILDON. 



142 THE ANCESTOR 



NORTH MEOLS 1 

FEW southrons could point out North Meols upon a map 
of England unaided by the knowledge that the Lanca- 
shire watering-place of Southport is a hamlet upon its 
coastside. In the future the curious concerning North Meols 
will be directed for full and sufficient answer to any question 
concerning the parish to Mr. Farrer's history, which leaves 
poor gleaning for the topographer who shall follow in his steps. 
In one of the handsomest archaeological books of late years we 
have the history at large and in detail of the two townships 
which go to the parish, the story of the church, its rectors and 
monuments, and of the grammar school, and of the famous 
mere to the east of the parish. 

The ' meols ' which give their name to the parish are ' mels ' 
or sand-hills, amongst which the norseman Odda, son of 
Grim, settled in far days beyond the conquest. Otegrimele is 
in the survey of 1086, and was amongst the poor marshlands 
which were returned as quit except of Danegeld. The Bussels, 
barons of Penwortham, gave to God and St. Werburgh of 
Chester three ox gangs in Moeles with the human live stock 
holding those lands. At a date between 1 189 and 1 194 Hugh 
Bussel, the fourth baron, gave all Normeles to Richard the son 
of Hutred, who gave him for the grant five marks of silver 
and one buskin or hunting boot. This Richard was lord of 
Broghton and Little Singleton, and master serjeant for the 
crown of the Wapentake of Amounderness, and was followed 
by Alan his son, called Alan of Singleton; but the last trace of 
the Singletons in North Meols is found in a release made in 
Edward II. 's time by Thomas of Singleton. 

Roger de Lacy, the constable of Chester, followed the 
Bussels in their barony, and under him appears Alan of Meols, 
a freeman taking his name from his estate here. With this Alan 
begins the connected story and pedigree of the manor lords of 
Meols. He is the man of Roger de Lacy, and a charter of 

1 A History of the Parish of North Meols in the hundred of West Derby and 
county of Lancaster ; with historical and descriptive notices of Eirkdak and Martin 
Mere ; by William Farrer. Liverpool : Henry Young & Sons (1903). 



NORTH MEOLS 143 

his is extant which must have been given between 1204 and 
1209. Beside him in King John's reign appears Robert the 
first of the Coudrays, lords of North Meols for five genera- 
tions. Coudray, as Mr. Farrer points out, is the name of a 
manor in the marches of Wales, and Robert's alleged by-name 
of Russel, which was certainly the by-name of his nephew 
William, smells of the Norman. He had the whole town of 
Meols with its mill from John de Lacy the constable before 
his death in 1222. William Russel, otherwise Coudray, fol- 
lowed his uncle Robert, and in 1232 was in the service of 
Ranulf, Earl of Chester in Normandy, as appears by a man- 
date directed in that year to the Sheriff of Lancaster. A 
number of his charters remain, from which Mr. Farrer has 
recovered many valuable notes of the placenames and bound- 
aries of these townships of salt and moss and drifting sand. 

A mass of good genealogical work the results being 
tabulated in one of those great folding pedigrees which, 
necessary as they may be, have the disadvantage to the book- 
owner of tearing at the third time of reference to them carries 
on the manorial history. Robert of Coudray, lord of the 
whole manor of North Meols and great grandson of William 
Russel alias Coudray, left two daughters and coheirs, only 
one of whom continues the pedigree. This daughter 
Katherine, after the death of her first husband, Alan son of 
Richard of Downholland, whose only child by her died 
without issue, married Richard of Aghton. The parentage 
of Richard is unknown, but he may have been Richard, son 
of Walter of Aghton, a high-spirited young man who went 
over sea in the service of King Edward III., which loyal 
journey was allowed by that sovereign to wipe off the offence 
of the death of Dionis, wife of Richard son of William 
Bimmesone. William of Aghton, son of Richard and Kath- 
erine, married Millicent, daughter and coheir of John Comyn, 
lord of Kinsale, and after this match the Aughtons of Meols 
took the Comyn shield of arms, a black shield with three 
golden sheaves (of cummin). North Meols descended with 
the Aughtons from father to son, one of them, Sir Richard 
Aughton, leading thirty-six men to the Earl of Derby's muster 
against the rebels of 1536. His son John died without issue 
in 1550 and two sisters were the coheirs. The one married 
a cadet of Bold of Bold, and her one son died childless, 
having conveyed away his moiety of the manor of North 



i 4 4 THE ANCESTOR 

Meols to his father's house. The other married Barnaby 
Kitchen of Pilling, a squire whose shield of arms takes our 
attention as a version of the shield of that northern family of 
Kitchen, whose arms and crest our modern kings of arms 
have taken in hand to make an achievement of arms for Lord 
Kitchener of Khartum, whose family came out of Hampshire. 
Alice, only child of Ann Aughton and Barnaby Kitchen, 
married Hugh Hesketh, a bastard son of her kinsman Sir 
Thomas Hesketh of Rufford, and in her descendants the 
Hesketh half of the manor remains. 

The Heskeths and Bolds were both recusant families, and 
the history of such is a long record of vexatious fines and 
sequestrations obstinately suffered. William Hesketh of 
North Meols was in arms against the parliament and died in 
the king's service in 1 643, in which year his estates were taken 
into the hands of the parliament. North Meols escaped the 
tumults of war, but its sons would doubtless have borne a 
great part in the stirring doings of the day had it not been for 
an untoward circumstance. North Meols had scoured its 
harness and was putting itself ' into a posture of warr ' ready 
to strike in on one side or the other, when Captain Geoffrey 
Holcroft and his parliament troop swooped upon them and 
carried off the cherished weapons of war with which the 
forces of North Meols had armed themselves. For the restora- 
tion of this artillery (' towe fowleinge peeces and towe burdinge 
peeces ') North Meols made pitiful petition to the colonels at 
Ormskirk, protesting that all four pieces should serve king 
and parliament alike and that ' armes are verie skant and ill to 
be come by.' The petition is unheeded and North Meols 
makes no armed entry upon English history. 

The Heskeths came well away from the troublous times 
with the loss but of a few years' rents, and the cavalier's 
brother succeeded him in the end at North Meols. Roger, 
the cavalier's nephew, having learned no wisdom from his 
uncle's misfortunes, received arms at a distribution made in 
1 692 amongst Lancashire gentry ill-affected to King William, 
and was a prisoner at Manchester in 1694 with his wife 
Mary, charged with being concerned in the Jacobite rising 
in Lancashire. We may perhaps be allowed to connect 
their escape from the law with the fact that Barnaby Hesketh 
of North Meols was one of the grand jury trying them, blood 
in Lancashire being deemed thicker than water. The obscurity 



NORTH MEOLS 145 

of this remote family of squires is shown by the fact that for 
four generations in the direct line we have but the Christian 
names of their wives. In 1733 Roger Hesketh, the squire of 
North Meols, married with Margaret, eldest daughter and 
coheir of Rossall of Fleetwood, and the effect of this marriage 
upon the family fortunes is seen in his shrievalty of the county 
in 1740. His two grandsons were sheriffs in their day, and 
his great-grandson, who took the Fleetwood name and arms, 
was created a baronet in 1838. 

The baronetcy expired with the first baronet, whose only 
surviving son was born out of wedlock, and he was succeeded 
by his brother Charles, the rector of North Meols, who died 
in 1876. The portrait of this Charles Hesketh stands for a 
frontispiece to Mr. Farrer's book. His strong features, with 
shaven lips and side whiskers above white tie and broadcloth, 
should give this portrait a value in some future day when 
our descendants would see what manner of man was the 
squarson of the Victorian time. 

In the next generation the Hesketh moiety passed away 
again from the male line to the family of Bibby, in which it 
remains, and Charles Hesketh Bibbey-Hesketh of North 
Meols, high sheriff in 1901, is its lord, the descendant of 
Alan of Meols of King John's time, of the Coudrays and 
the Aughtons, of Barnaby Kitchen and Hugh Hesketh. 

The grammar school of North Meols was founded in 
1593 by Edward Halsall of Halsall, but the old school house, 
pulled down in 1827, was built by the lords of the two 
moieties of the manor. Rebuilt in 1837, its endowment, 
like many others, disappeared in mystery. It was last heard 
of as lent to the overseers to pave Bankfield Lane, and shorn 
of its income the grammar school exists as the National 
School of North Meols. 

For the church of North Meols Mr. Farrer has all our 
sympathy. Such industry as his deserved at the least a fifteenth 
century tower, an old font or the like, a crossed-legged Meols 
or Coudray in a dark niche. But in a score of lines he can 
say of it all he needs to say. It was built in 1730 in the 
place of an old church which fire consumed, for the sum of 
.1,292 > ar >d at that price North Meols obtained a church of 
which Mr. Farrer remarks that even as an example of the 
dispiriting architecture of its date ' it is particularly lacking 
in artistic features.' It is made beautiful within by a board on 



146 THE ANCESTOR 

which is painted the names of the churchwardens, and without 
by the carven names of more churchwardens. There is also 
a sundial to give what flavour of antiquity the date of 1827 
may impart. It goes for something that the strongbox of 
the depressing temple holds a chalice with the London plate- 
mark of 1579-80. 

Mr. Farrer has forty names of rectors in his carefully 
annotated list, from Adam the clerk of Mieles, who was fined for 
some sportsmanlike breach of the forest law, to the Rev. James 
Denton Thompson, the present rector. The best known name 
is that of Thomas Stanley, Bishop of Sodor, a bastard of Sir 
Edward Stanley, Lord Monteagle, who held two more rec- 
tories in Lancashire and two in Yorkshire, by reason of 
whose neglect the Meols folk lay dead for days together before 
a priest could be brought to bury them. 

Meols had its vicar of Bray in James Starkie, presented in 
1639 by K m g Charles, the patron being a minor and the 
king's ward. When Presbyterian views came in Master 
James Starkie veered readily about, and signed the ' Harmo- 
nious Consent ' of 1 648 with the same goodwill with which 
after the Restoration he signed the Articles of 1 662, and thus 
stayed unchallenged in rectory and chancel until his death in 
1684. Edward Shakespear, rector in 1735, not only made 
two sermons upon f the Use and Intent of Divine and Human 
Laws ' and on the ' Mutual Obligation of Clergy and Laity to 
Holiness of Life,' but printed them into the bargain. When 
he died in 1748 ' his quondam Acquaintance and Friend J. C., 
A.M., Minister of B.,' mourns this swan of North Meols in 
a neat copy of verses, which beginning 

Mourn all ye Muses, and Apollo mourn, 
Your SHAKESPEAR dies, and sinks into his Urn, 

go on to suggest that only the Pythagorean doctrine could 
account for the nature of the late Rev. Mr. Shakespear's 
literary abilities. England is doomed to see but two Shake- 
spear's ' Alike in Genius and alike in Fame,' and the gloom 
which shrouds North Meols is described as affecting even the 
canary bird of the ascended rector. 

Sounds from his pulpit stunn'd the Deisfs Ear 
And wrought conversion by well grounded Fear. 

The garlands won in North Meols are not to wither upon 



NORTH MEOLS 147 

Mr. Shakespear's brow. The fame of the author of the 
' Mutual Obligation of Clergy and Laity ' will follow him : 

O Saint disrob'd, tell, in what argent Groves 
Among celestial Entities Thou roves. 
Ravish'd, methinks, I see the Heav'nly Throng 
Court thee, what Choir august Thou'lt sit among. 

Of a truth, after Mr. Shakespear has sunk into his urn, 
it is pure bathos of Mr. Farrer to hurry us on to the record 
of his successor, John Baldwin, M.A., whose only title to 
remembrance lies in the fact that he took the name of Rigbye 
by royal licence and died in 1793. The rectory of North 
Meols may be recommended as safe anchorage for churchmen 
unharrassed by professional ambition, for since the reign of 
Elizabeth only one rector has obtained other preferment. 

The shields of the various lords of Meols are excellent 
examples of the manner in which good armorial ornament 
may be used in illustration ; although the Victorian beauties 
of the new shield and crest of Mr. Bibby-Hesketh have 
troubled the artist even as they would delight Mr. Phillimore. 
In this case the uncrested helm between its two detached 
crests, each upon its stiff sausaged wreath, is a survival of the 
bad days of armorial design. The curious shield attributed to 
Meols three roundels borne in the chief will attract students 
of armory, and seems to be a curious variant of the arms of 
Meols which are attached to the barons' letter of 1301. 

O. B. 



148 THE ANCESTOR 



A DICTIONARY OF CAMBRIDGE MEN 1 

THIS useful reference book carries on the work of the 
series of volumes entitled Graduati Cantabrigienses which 
have appeared between 1787 and 1884. The genealogist and 
biographer have now to hand lists of all Cambridge graduates 
from 1659 to the end of the nineteenth century. A notable 
addition has been made in the shape of the names and dates 
of matriculation of those members of the university who have 
not proceeded to a degree. Whilst awaiting, and we may 
suppose awaiting in vain, the volumes which shall give 
the genealogist the much to be desired particulars of 
the age and parentage of the matriculated, this book, which 
has been carefully edited by the Rev. J. F. E. Faning, assistant 
registrary of the university, will be taken at once into general 
use. 

1 The Book of Matriculations and Degrees : a Catalogue of those who have 
been matriculated or admitted to any Degree in the University of Cambridge 
from 1851 to 1900. (Cambridge : at the University Press). 



HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 1 

MRS. NAPIER HIGGINS, who, challenging the known 
claims of more than one of the name of Bernard, an- 
nounces herself as ' the last scion of the last known branch ' of 
the Bernards whose history she traces, has set about her task of 
chronicler of her family with the industry which should be the 
first qualification for such an adventure. Witness two volumes 
of 350 pages apiece and the promise in her preface of two 
more such volumes to come. Of other qualifications for the 
writing of family history Mrs. Higgins has no more than is 
usually found amongst the makers of such books, although 
it may at least be said that her pages show that she has 
avoided as far as may be entangling technicalities of whose 
purport she is ignorant. Of the two volumes, the whole of 
the second and nearly the half of the first is the biography of 
Sir Francis Bernard, governor of Massachusetts for King 
George III., the remaining pages carrying the family history 
from the thirteenth century to the days of the governor. 

With the thirteenth century then we begin, although so old 
and well rooted a family as the Bernards has not made its way 
down the centuries without acquiring a pedigree made out in the 
older and more imaginative manner. Danish descent is given 
them by some, whilst the Dictionary of the Peerage is quoted for 
Sir Theophilus ! { a valiant knyghte of German descent, who in 
1066 accompanied William the Conqueror into England ; who 
was son of Sir Egerett and father of Sir Dorbard Bernard, 
whose descendants settled in the counties of Westmorland, 
York, and Northampton.' Mrs. Higgins betrays a certain shy- 
ness in the presence of these three mail-clad improbabilities, 
and remarks with well-advised suspicion that she knows nothing 
of this genealogy from any other source, which is a pity, for 
Egerett and Dorbard are as pleasing ancestral names as we 
have met with, and for a Sir Theophilus, as for Sir Titus of 
the Leightons, one might draw Domesday in vain. 

Godfrey Bernard of Henry III.'s time is the first Bernard 

1 The Bernards ofAblngton and Nether Wincbendon, a family history, by Mrs. 
Napier Higgins : in two volumes (Longmans, Green & Co. 1903). 



1 49 



150 THE ANCESTOR 

whom Mrs. Higgins will recognize as a blood relation, and 
although we have reason to believe that Godfrey lived and 
breathed and had his being at Wanford in Yorkshire, Mrs. 
Higgins continues to give him a pretty air of unlikeliness, by 
refusing us any evidences to support him, and by the entirely 
delightful suggestion that he was, like as not, a cousin of St. 
Bernard of Clairvaux. The evidences for this suggestion are 
not withheld. St. Bernard's name was Bernard, and Bernard 
was Godfrey's surname. Some centuries after Godfrey's death, 
his descendants, musing upon the bear in their arms, chose 
for their ' word ' bear and forbear^ whilst sustine et abstine is the 
word attributed to the saint of Clairvaux. c Matilda,' wife of 
King Stephen, received St. Bernard at Boulogne, and from 
these premises the conclusion that ' a nephew or cousin ' of 
that saint may have crossed the Channel can hardly be avoided. 
That Bernard as a surname comes from Bernard the forename 
cannot be doubted, and Mrs. Higgins is ready with a new 
theory of surnames of this nature, that they are not necessarily 
derived from a forefather. From whom then but from ' a 
kinsman of marked celebrity,' and celebrated St. Bernard was 
in truth. The armorial argument comes happily in. The 
Bernards must have come over sea with their English trans- 
lation of their saintly uncle's motto. The arms * followed as 
an illustration of bear and forbear.' That this precious motto 
is certainly of late origin, and the arms of the bear as certainly 
derived from the bearish name of Bernard has never been con- 
sidered by Mrs. Higgins amongst the several theories she 
discusses. Of the name Godfrey we have the note that to 
Mrs. Higgins ' it almost suggests a foreign, but not a Norman, 
origin.' 

From Godfrey, who exchanges his home in Yorkshire for 
one at Iselham in Cambridgeshire, a flitting for which Mrs. 
Higgins thinks it unnecessary to adduce any evidence, the 
pedigree flows mildly onward for several chapters, but as Mrs. 
Higgins' researches are mere nibblings from accessible book- 
shelves, and transcripts from the county historians Baker and 
Lipscomb, and from Mr. Wotton's baronetage, they do not call 
for criticism. That an old family of Bernard or Barnard was 
settled at Iselham in Cambridgeshire, and afterwards in North- 
amptonshire, is well known, if only by the monuments which 
they have left behind them ; but the running commentary of 
Mrs. Higgins, who has no special knowledge of old English 



HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 151 

customs and history and is sadly to seek in the matters of 
genealogy and armory, does not throw any fresh light upon 
their lives. The house of Abington, which was their North- 
amptonshire seat, has now passed into the hands of the North- 
ampton Corporation, and the oak panels with their rich carving 
of armories and grotesques have been most happily preserved 
for coming generations, although an interesting Tudorwing, with 
a secret staircase in it, seems to have shared the fate of a walled 
garden and many old trees which a municipality uncaring for 
such things has levelled in wicked haste. The match which 
bought the Northamptonshire lands was that of Robert 
Bernard with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Lillyng, a 
family here described as ' cadets of the noble house of Lucy,' 
apparently on the ground that ' they bore the same arms.' As 
the Lucys and Lillyngs did not bear the same arms the con- 
nection seems hardly established. 

Turning page by page we regret more and more that the 
story of the family had not been reinforced by good illustrations 
of their famous effigies and brasses still remaining. With these 
before us we could have pardoned much. Without them to 
distract us the eye is apt to rest upon such trivialities as the 
note upon a Mary Bernard of the fifteenth century. 

' Mary, oc. 4 H. 5 ' is the notice of her in Baker's history. This may 
mean ' occisa,' but perhaps stand for 'occidit,' and therefore does not imply 
any violent ending of her life. 

It certainly does not, and if we suggest that the doubtful 
' oc.' indicates that Mr. Baker had found Mary's name 
' occurs ' in a document of the date quoted we have taken away 
all need for poor Mary Bernard to haunt the carved room at 
Abington o'nights. The reason for Mrs. Higgins' reluctance 
to quote the authority of medieval records is perhaps hinted at 
by her repeated citation of the famous old Collectanea Topogra- 
pbica, from which she has gathered particulars of Sir John Ber- 
nard of Abington's great match with a daughter of the Scrope 
of Bolton, as Collectanea Typograpbica. 

Two battles appear in our history. To one, the battle of 
Northampton, of which a description is given from Hartwright's 
Story of the House of Lancaster, we are led unwillingly, for we 
are brought to it only as to a battle in which the Bernards may 
have fought. ' I have no evidence ' says Mrs. Higgins, ' as to 
the part they [the Bernards] took on that occasion ' ; perhaps it 



1 52 THE ANCESTOR 

was confined to the defence of their own possessions. A battle 
in which the Bernards may have taken part to the extent of 
closing their window-catches and seeing that the front door was 
safely bolted, does not appeal to us as a battle which should 
have place in the military history of the family. 

Bosworth field is another matter, for Baker's pedigree 
which notes Sir John Bernard's death in 1485, is vigorously 
amplified by a member of his family who vouches for the fact 
that c Sir John bore Richard's personal banner of the White 
Rose at Bosworth, and fell by his master's side in the last 
desperate charge which so nearly won the day for King 
Dicken.' For this at least some authority should have been 
cited, for the banner, for the bannerer, and for his part in the 
charge. But Mrs. Higgins is untroubled by the need, musing 
rather upon what motives, what ' creditable motives,' could 
have brought the respectable bear of the Bernards into such 
royally bad company as that of the white boar of York. Mrs. 
Higgins pleads loyally for her ancestor. Perhaps ' Sir John 
Bernard may not have believed the king guilty of the crimes 
laid to his charge '; he may have 'admired his ability.' But 
we have no comfort for Mrs. Higgins ; we think it very 
wrong of Sir John, and his misadventure in the last charge 
should be a warning to others to choose their friends more 
carefully. 

In spite of Sir John's alleged mishap the family kept 
Abington out of the hands of the Tudors and the greedy men 
about their court. They had made another good match with 
Margaret, an heir of the Daundelyns of Doddington and 
Earl's Barton, for whose family antiquity we are, not greatly 
to our surprise, referred to the ' Battle Abbey Roll,' which 
Mrs. Higgins treats as a grave record rather than as a popular 
fiction of the later middle ages. But the Bernards were to 
make a more famous marriage than that with Scrope or Daun- 
delyn. Baldwin Bernard, who died in 1610, had married for 
a second wife Eleanor Fullwood, who was distantly connected 
with Arden of Wilmcote, an ancestor of William Shakespeare, 
but the Bernards were to come nearer the rose than that. 
John Bernard, son of Baldwin, was born about 1604. He 
took no part in the civil wars, but Mrs. Higgins, ever eager 
for the family credit, is quick to suggest that the affection for 
royalty which he must have cherished from early associations 
(the sovereign having drawn the rents of Abington during his 



HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 153 

minority) ' may have been gradually modified by reading and 
observation.' 

After his first wife's death John Bernard made his memor- 
able second choice and married a childless widow of forty 
years of age, Elizabeth Nash, daughter of Doctor Hall, and 
granddaughter of William Shakespeare. Unhappily for 
genealogists the middle-aged couple had no child born to 
them, and whilst hardly any Englishman is without his royal 
descent from our old kings, no one can boast himself of the 
blood of Shakespeare. 

Soon after the restoration John Bernard was knighted and 
Shakespeare's granddaughter became the Lady Bernard. Sir 
John lived at Abington till his death in 1 6yf , but in 1 669 he 
had sold away the ancient manor of the Lillyngs and the 
Bernards to William Thursby of the Middle Temple. 

The male line of the Bernards went on through Francis, a 
younger brother of Baldwin. He was of the stately old 
village of Kingsthorpe recorded as having once, in its pride, 
kept three coaches and six. From one of his sons, as we 
believe, descends a well known writer on archaeological sub- 
jects, Mr. Francis Pierrepont Barnard. Robert the eldest 
son was at the bar, and as a burgess of Huntingdon in 1 630 
was in the town's new charter appointed one of the justices 
of the borough side by side with another burgess one 
Oliver Cromwell, esquire, who in the matter of this new 
charter allowed himself to use ' disgracefull and unseemley 
speeches ' to Mr. Bernard and the mayor, disgraceful the 
more for their difference in station, for Mr. Robert Bernard 
was the ' principal resident gentleman within the jurisdiction 
of the new corporation.' Yet Mr. Bernard was to live to 
see his troublesome fellow burgess the * principal resident 
gentleman ' within an even larger area. It is plain that Mr. 
Bernard had no nose for coming greatness, for his name is 
associated with that of Milton by reason of his moving in 
the court of requests, as counsel for Sir Thomas Cotton, 
that an attachment should be issued of the goods of John 
Milton the elder, the poet's old and infirm father. He took 
the coif of serjeant-at-law under the parliament in 1648 ; 
prospered and bought Brampton Hall, and stood by the 
Cromwells to their end, marrying a son to Elizabeth St. John, 
whose mother was a Cromwell. Serjeant Bernard was one 
of those happy time-servers of 1660. The king's restora- 



i 5 4 THE ANCESTOR 

tion brought him no loss of fortune, a knighthood rather, 
with a baronetcy to follow. At this time a younger son of 
his, William Bernard, whom his father had prenticed to a 
grocer, was heaping up more enduring honours, being ad- 
mitted on one occasion to the sharing of a barrel of oysters 
and ' a great deal of wine ' with Blessed Samuel Pepys him- 
self, and by giving in return, at the Sun in Fish Street, a 
pie which has its place in the golden book of pies, being 
recorded by the diarist of diarists as ' a pie of such pleasant 
variety of good things as in all my life I never tasted.' 
This worthy young man's father has his own place in the 
diary he gave no pie, but Pepys saw him in church at 
Brampton with his lady and his lady's father, my late Lord 
St. John (an Oliver's peer), a very plain, grave man. The 
serjeant died at last in 1666, being even then at work in 
Serjeant's Inn. His son had married a Shuckburgh, whose 
father had laid in Kenilworth Castle after being taken at 
Edgehill. Yet what puzzled hatred these Shuckburghs and 
their like must have kept for such as the Bernards, who had 
coined their guineas steadily during the troubles, had risen 
with the Cromwells, and risen again with the Young Man's 
return. 

The last baronet of the line died unmarried in 1789. He 
was member for Westminster, was tortured by the gout, and 
left land of 14,000 a year to his nephew, a Westminster 
schoolboy named Sparrow, ancestor of the Duke of Man- 
chester. 

Thomas Bernard, ancestor of another branch, a cadet of 
Abington, was born about 1570 and dwelt at Reading, dying 
in 1628. The obscurity of this branch is shown by the absence 
from the pedigree of the surname of his wife and of the wife of 
the son Francis who succeeded him. A second Francis, son 
of this last, matriculated at Oxford in 1677, says Mrs. Higgins, 
' as " pleb," which I have discovered to mean yeoman ' ! This 
Francis held a college living in Wiltshire, and in 1702 was 
given that of Brightwell in Berkshire. He married Margery 
Winlowe of Lewknor, by whom he had issue a third Francis, 
the future governor of Massachusetts, an only child, christened 
in 1712, three years before his father's death. 

Francis Bernard, who was called to the bar in 1737, settled 
at Lincoln in the cathedral shadows. He was notary public 
and commissioner of bails and commissary-general for the 



HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 155 

peculiars of the dean and chapter in Oxford, Buckingham and 
Northampton. Here in Evelyn's 'old confused town, very 
long, uneven, steep and ragged,' the holder of half a dozen 
provincial offices, and a married man with a family growing 
up about him, Francis Bernard might surely have seen the 
promise before him of the private life, quiet and uneventful. 
At this point Mrs. Higgins's narrative begins to have a value 
of its own. In place of extracts from half-comprehended 
folios we have notes from letters, stories which are family 
tradition, and many citations from documents which Mrs. 
Higgins has consulted at first hand. The quotations from 
printed works show at least a genuine desire for research, and 
the character of our book steadily improves. But it improves 
into something between a biography and a historical tract 
upon the troubles in America, and therefore removes itself the 
more from the field of the Ancestor s criticism, save for the 
personal note here and there encountered. With the entry of 
Francis Bernard into Lincoln we have costume and provincial 
manners illustrated by the fate of a young Mrs. Terry, of a 
family connected with the Bernards. On a Sunday in 1720 
she came into the minster in a habit of pearl-coloured cloth 
with gold lace and fur linings, so modish that devotion was 
disturbed until the chanter, with rare courage, sent a verger 
to ask her to leave at once what Mrs. Higgins has an unhappy 
tendency to call the * sacred edifice.' Of the three Bishops of 
Lincoln under whom Francis Bernard lived we have sketch 
portraits. Bishop Reynolds is qualified by Doddridge as a 
' valuable ' bishop, which may be intrepreted an evangelical 
one. For the antiquary he is the wretch who gave the ancient 
palace of the Bishops of Lincoln as a quarry for the cathedral 
works. John Thomas, bishop in 1743, was a favourite of 
royal George II., probably because, having been a chaplain to 
the English merchants in Hamburg, he could speak in a 
tongue sweeter than the English in majesty's ears. He 
squinted, he was deaf, too fond of the great folk in whose 
company he had learned to be ' sadly forgetful of his promises.' 
But he was a facetious and humorous prelate, and his rule 
may have been welcome in Lincoln after the ministrations of 
the valuable Reynolds. John Green followed him, a popular 
man and an idle. 

In old Lincoln then Francis Bernard dwelt for a score of 
years, living by the law, meddling with architecture, making 



156 THE ANCESTOR 

Latin and English verses and getting Shakespeare's plays by 
heart. The houses which had the advantage of his polite 
taste are unidentified, and Latin verses are ever a very private 
joy, but an English quatrain survives which is traced to him, 
the famous toast of 

Here's a health to all those that we love, 

Here's a health to all those that love us ; 

Here's a health to all those that love them that love those 

That love them that love those that love us. 

Such a toast might take a man far. Toasts in the eigh- 
teenth century were not as Mrs. Higgins remarks c necessarily 
associated with hard drinking,' but they were nevertheless 
associated with good company over a table full of rummers 
and toast glasses, and Francis became an acceptable kinsman 
to his wife's high-placed cousins the Barringtons my Lord 
Viscount Barrington and his brothers, the major-general who 
was at Guadalupe, the Welsh judge, Samuel the Admiral of 
the White and Shute the bishop. In such good fellowship 
the commissary of the peculiars began to lift his head and 
look further abroad for food for the seven cubs of the Bernard 
bear who were growing up in his house. His wife's uncle 
had been governor of Massachusetts, and Thomas Pownall, 
once a neighbour of his, followed Shirley in that office. In 
1758 Francis Bernard, esquire, under the Lord Barrington's 
influence became Captain-General and Governor-in-chief of 
New Jersey, and the Lincoln home broke up for ever. 
Francis the eldest son had just won a scholarship at West- 
minster, and according to the ancient custom of the school 
had been tossed in a blanket therefor. Accepting the honour 
uneasily he had fallen out on his head, and poor Francis 
Bernard's head was never good for much thenceafter. He 
and John, Jane and Fanny the baby were to be left in Eng- 
land, whilst the others, Thomas, Shute, William and Amelia, 
went over sea to the new life in New England, where they 
came after a voyage of six weeks at the least. 

The government of New Jersey was a beginner's place. 
In 1758 it was still a settler's province with a good harbour 
to which it had no trade to bring. Thinly peopled as it was, 
it had its internal politics and its foreign wars. The nameless 
Quakers of West New Jersey were robbed of their citizenship 
by the ruling colonists, and the Minisinks raided into the 
New Jersey clearings the more boldly by reason that the Legis- 



HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 157 

lature had, in view of the fact that the frontier was in excep- 
tional danger, economized by reducing its army upon the 
frontier to fifty men. 

Francis Bernard fell to work, as it seems, with the fresh 
and vigorous policy which might be expected from the man 
from Lincoln unskilled in the diplomacy of delay and circum- 
locution. He prepared for war upon the frontier, being captain- 
general as well as governor, and once prepared met the Indians 
fairly, and heard their undoubted grievances at a conference at 
Easton. In October, 1758, the late commissary-general of 
the peculiars who had been walking Lincoln streets in 
April was touching wampum belts, sitting in full pow-wow 
with the warriors of the six nations, with the Nanticokes and 
Conoys, Tuteloes and Chugnuts, with the angry Minisinks, 
and with that tribe of Mohicans whose name is honourable 
wherever the English schoolboy runs wild. Francis Bernard, 
all unknowing, may have heard the approving ugh of Uncas 
at the end of his little speech, and passed the peace-pipe to 
the hands of the wise Chingachgook. Francis Bernard spoke 
and was answered by a chief whose name of Teedyuscung 
suggests in its first syllables the born political orator. A 
thousand Spanish dollars and a few tactful words made peace 
with the nations, and doubtless saved many a New Jersey- 
man's scalp. At the entreaty of a chief named Thomas King, 
* the lock was taken off the rum ' that the hearts of all might 
be glad at parting, and Francis Bernard's first experience as a 
ruler was happily over. Equal fortune followed his attempted 
settlement of the difficulties of the Quakers. His new dignity 
was not so stiff upon him that King George's governor might 
not waive the form and ceremony which the Quaker refused 
so stubbornly. A Quaker was given a seat upon the council- 
board, and Bernard became to the Quakers c the friend of the 
Friends.' 

After a year and a half of such a Baratarian governorship 
Bernard's powerful home influence moved him to the higher 
and uneasier seat of the Governor of Massachusetts. Here 
Governor Bernard found himself a great man, King George's 
representative, and a mark for the hatred which the Bostonians 
were cherishing for that unpopular sovereign. On every 
side were the evidences of his new state and of its accompany- 
ing danger and contumely. Governor Bernard went in state 
with halbardiers behind him to the old King's Chapel or Church 



158 THE ANCESTOR 

of the Governors to be reminded by its site that Chief Justice 
Sewall and his puritans having refused to sell ground to the 
Governor Andros for the chapel of his detested religion, a 
corner of the burial ground had to be seized for the building. 
The ornaments of the church might remind the governor as 
he sat in his state pew under the scutcheons of dead and gone 
governors that now and again it happened that young puri- 
tanism, chafing under the iniquitous existence in its town of 
boards with the Lord's Prayer and Creed in gilt letters, and 
pillars which were flagrantly decked with green boughs for 
the celebration of a heathen festival known as Christmas Day, 
broke in the windows and piously spattered filth upon the 
accursed thing. 

Massachusetts in 1740 had been by the testimony of 
Colonel Bladen ' a kind of commonwealth where the king is 
hardly a Stadtholder.' In 1760 even this limited rule was 
tottering. Wolfe had died upon the heights of Abraham the 
year before and two months after Francis Bernard had read his 
commission the news came of the fall of Montreal, the French 
dominion in Canada. But with this relief from the foreign 
peril came new troubles for King George. The colonists and 
frontiers men who had followed Wolfe came back to New 
England as war-trained officers and veteran soldiers of a cam- 
paign. They were familiar too with their comrades of the 
English regular troops and had all a colonist's contempt for 
the feeble obstinacy of the ministers and clerks at home, who 
hampered the army's movements. One may imagine the feel- 
ings of the riflemen of the backwoods towards the administra- 
tion which while insisting that the soldier's head should be 
dusted with flour, refused to allow him a practice cartridge to 
bang off at a target, holding that true economy ordered that 
a soldier's acquaintance with his clumsy musket should begin 
upon the field. 

In the October of this year of 1760 died King George II. 
Governor Bernard had now for his master oversea a young 
man of twenty-two, and the good fortune of the house of 
Hanover again wrought against itself in America. As the 
breaking of the French power in Canada left the colonists free 
to match their turbulence against their rulers' obstinacy, so the 
unquestioned succession of the son of him who had seen his 
rival's army at Derby took away from the Americans that 
shadow of a popish-Jacobite dynasty in whose dread they had 



HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 159 

lived. The last principle which might wring from them 
a tithe of grudging loyalty had now disappeared. King 
George II., who had been prayed for three months after his 
death in the Governor's chapel at Boston, was dead, and King 
George III. was proclaimed by Governor Bernard on the 30 
December, 1760. 

The young Rehoboam was upon his father's throne and 
the end was near. The first serious trouble of Governor 
Bernard's administration shows the pitiable position in which 
King George's governors in America found themselves. 
The French were still in Canada, and in the cause of the 
colonists English treasure was crossing the Atlantic and the 
English army was being spent in wild foreign service. At 
such a time it came at last to the ears of those in power at 
home that French resistance was fed by American aid. The 
very colonists in the cause of whose freedom and safety this 
great struggle was being fought out, were with inconceivable 
baseness taking French gold for regular supplies of smuggled 
provisions and stores. The Governor of 'Massachusetts was 
urged to move vigorously against the iniquity. But cargoes 
for smuggling lay in the most respectable cellars and ware- 
houses in New England and the writs whereby the Comp- 
troller of Customs made search for them with the aid of the 
governor's forces were strenuously resisted. The smuggling 
party was in force enough to seek remedy in the Supreme 
Court for the interference with their business, although a 
verdict in their favour was impossible. For four or five hours 
James Otis pleaded the cause of these huckstering patriots, 
carrying the crowd with him as he ranted. In such a scene 
wrote John Adams with something less than the humour of 
his country, ' American independence was then and there born '! 
and it may be presumed that the sacred right of succouring 
his country's enemies for commercial reasons prevailed until 
the end of the war in 1763. 

It is not within our province to trace the history of 
Governor Bernard, a governor compelled to live with the 
symbols of a vexatious authority about him, and yet to be 
ever without the force behind him to exact respect for those 
symbols, from the day when the General Court addressed him 
as one ' whose honour and prosperity we ardently wish for,' to 
the day when with liberty tree decked with flags, with ringing 
of bells and firing of cannon the governor stood out to sea 



160 THE ANCESTOR 

from Boston harbour, covered with accusations of avarice, 
treachery, cowardice and oppression. He seems to have been 
an honest gentleman and a well-meaning, who fought an uphill 
fight in which at every point of the game he was outmatched 
by his adversaries. Many such honest and well-meaning 
gentlemen have place in the story of our country's failures in 
war and peace, and a stronger man in Bernard's place might 
but have added oil to flame. 

The sidelights upon colonial life are pleasanter reading. 
Many years after the American provinces were lost to us, 
Julia Bernard, the governor's daughter, wrote down for her 
descendants some account of their life in Massachusetts. She 
had been born in New Jersey in 1759, and left America in her 
tenth year, but her remembrances of a stranger life than that 
she came to in England are always the fresh and interesting 
pictures stored in the mind of a bright-witted little girl. 

First of all she recalls life and movement of her childhood ; 
the twelve oared barge in which the sea became a familiar 
path, the swift sleighs that carried them in winter over roads 
along which in milder weather wheels would not pass, the town 
coach, and the horses upon which the children rode. All these 
things made memories for the child to carry to England from 
a larger life than that which awaited her there. { I often think ' 
she was to write long years after * over those early days 
of my existence, of so different a character from the later 
periods of my life. All seemed great, enlightened and enjoy- 
able.' 

She recalls her father, * who dressed superbly on public 
occasions,' and those were days in which a man with a mind 
for fine raiment might consider the lilies to their disadvantage. 
Francis Bernard was to die long before a coxcomb's phrase in 
a novel drove a nation into the black garments in which Mr. 
Henry Pelham was of opinion that a gentleman looked most 
distinguished. Julia remembers, too, her mother * tall, and 
a very fine woman ' ; her dresses with gold and siver lace, with 
ermine and rare sable. 

The sale of the governor's goods from the Massachusetts 
Gazette furnishes the little court of Julia's memories with 
crimson damask chairs in carved mahogany frames with window 
cushions and curtains to match. And the governors banquets 
are recalled by ' 8 mahogo dining Tables ' and ' 6 setts of 
Leather bottom chairs.' The Boston winters are suggested by 



HISTORY AND FAMILY HISTORY 161 

the ' 3 Tables forming a horse-shoe for the benefit of the Fire 
in winter.' 

The child propped upon the cushions of the state pew in 
the Governor's Church saw little of the iron piety which ruled 
Boston in the eighteenth century. The laws which governed 
those grave merchants whose ships carried rum from the 
Boston wharves to be exchanged for black ivory in African bays 
were founded upon such of the portions of the Mosaic code 
as commended themselves to the harsh soul of the Puritan. 
Sunday was a day in which the law alone walked abroad seek- 
ing whom it might devour, and Sunday began at sunset on 
Saturday. After that hour even those who lived by the 
wharves might not walk to the water-side. In full summer 
heat no one might take the air on Boston common, and if two 
or three met together by chance in Boston streets, stayed to 
exchange a word, fine and imprisonment awaited them if they 
obeyed not the first word of the constable bidding them 
disperse. In 1723 an unhappy man killed himself upon 
Sunday morning, and his widow was held to have gained 
extraordinary indulgence in being allowed a justices' licence to 
send a negro messenger to summon her son to her help. On 
Sunday the Independent minister was absolute, in the week he 
shared his power with the proud merchants whose carriages, 
plate and rich furniture from England were the boast of Boston. 
The fine dresses of the ladies rivalled London ; but, unhappily, 
they might be shown only at an occasional tea-drinking or 
promenade, for the laws forbade the theatre, and dancing was 
held a snare of Satan. In such a society one need hardly add 
that cards, drinking, smoking tobacco and swearing are set 
down by John Adams as the sole amusements of the young 
gentlemen of Boston. The taverns were full and were already 
gaining the political influence which their descendants the 
' saloons ' were to organize and wield in our own time. The 
puritan, rejecting the wisdom of the classics, set to work to 
expel nature with a pitchfork, but in the end we see an armed 
neutrality existing between hot youth and the puritan magis- 
tracy. Youth sat late, drank and sung in its tavern, and 
justice with deaf ears walked the high roads and kept the 
common and sea shore free of Sabbath-breakers. Into such a 
society the violence of partisan politics came and was made 
welcome as a new and sweet distraction. 

The other side of American life, and it is a side which a 






1 62 THE ANCESTOR 

thoughtful man might well set against the rest, is seen in a note 
made by Thomas Bernard, nearly thirty years after his father's 
banishment. 

One of my earliest pleasures, in part of my youth spent in America, was 
to view the eagerness with which the young labourer laid up the greatest part 
of his earnings, confident that when he married and settled in life it would 
secure him the property of a comfortable house and a little land. 

To a society in which no contrast could be seen between 
great wealth and abject poverty, and in which 'the means of 
subsistence were easy and open to all,' Americans and English- 
men alike may look back with regret. 

O.B. 



PATENT ROLLS OF HENRY IV. 1 



appearance of Henry of Bolingbroke on the stage of 
JL Her Majesty's has been almost synchronous with that of 
the first volume of his Patent Rolls in calendar form issued by 
the Public Record Office. And, in its own way, each of these 
events is welcome. The splendour of the scenes staged by 
Mr. Tree is reflected in the descriptions afforded by the Rolls 
of the forfeited treasures of Richard's supporters when Henry 
had trodden them under his feet. Those of the Earl 
of Kent, at Warwick Castle, which were bestowed on the 
Earl of Warwick, included an entire bed of red * damasq ' 
embroidered with * ostrychfetheres,' three curtains of red 
' tartaryne ' embroidered with the arms of the Earl of 
Stafford, pallet cloths of red and black * worstede ' em- 
broidered with the arms of Kent, and a dorsal with four 
side pieces of work of arras with the history of * Guy de 
Warrewyk.' Of singular interest is the long inventory of the 
Earl of Huntingdon's forfeited goods bestowed on Sir John 
Cornwall and his wife. Among them were ' a chapel of red 
cloth of gold with golden herons and falcons with " orfreys " 
of divers images, a chapel of blue, white, and red cloth of 
gold with golden swans, a chapel of black cloth of gold, a 
chapel of blue cloth of gold, a chapel of white silken cloth, 
and other " chapels " ; ' three blue cloths of gold with golden 
falcons, a red cloth of gold with golden trees, a red and white 
cloth of gold with golden leopards, a chalice of silver gilt with 
the arms of the countess on the foot, two spoons of which 
one is golden and the other of beryl set in gold, a sword for 
the lists, a shield, and great silver salts.' 

The possessions even of smaller men were rich in heraldic 
splendour. Thomas Shelley ' chivaler ' had forfeited ' bowls 
of silver gilt on the lips with a shield, argent a fess and three 
scallops sable, in the middle of each ; a cup of silver gilt with 
a cover with a shield, of the same arms on " le pomel," a gilt 

1 Calendar of the Patent Rolls of Henry IV. vol. i. 1399-1401 (Stationery 

Office). 

163 



1 64 THE ANCESTOR 

cup sculptured with divers animals,' many other pieces of plate, 
and ' four coats, two " trappiers," and a tunic of arms.' 

The follies of chivalry, as Mr. Freeman termed them, had 
distinguished, with heraldic accompaniment, the reign of 
Richard II. Among the spoils of the Earl of Huntingdon's 
forfeiture were, ' a bed and a celure of silk embroidered with 
bulls and the arms of March and Pembroke,' and ' four 
tapets of white colour with " ragged staves," ' besides c three 
cloths of gold worked with oaks, six red tapets worked with 
tapestry of the arms of the earl and his wife, a trapping of 
red velvet embroidered with stags, and tapets of red worsted 
embroidered with oak leaves,' and ' a bed of " baudekyn " 
embroidered with the arms of England and of " Henaud." 

No corporation of heralds was then in existence, but 
Richard Brugges alias Lancastre King of Arms was granted 
1\d. a day ' with robes pertaining to his estate ' as John 
Marche, herald, 'alias King Noreys,' had of the grant of 
Richard II. Percy 'Heraud' also received a grant of jio 
a year in lieu of the ^13 6s, %d. granted him as Wales 
' Heraud ' by Richard II. Lancaster and Percy themselves 
were now in possession of all power, and one of Henry's first 
acts was to grant to the Earl of Northumberland the Isle of Man 
' by the service of carrying at the left shoulder of the king or 
his heirs on the days of coronation the sword called " Lan- 
castre swerd," with which the king was girt when he put into 
the parts of Holdernesse.' Sword and shield were still supreme, 
but the shadow of their doom is seen in a commission to 
William Wodeward ' foundour ' and Gerard Sprunk to take 
brass and copper and charcoal and ' salpetir ' for the making 
and working of certain guns. 

There are also, of course, important entries bearing on 
genealogy and topography. A long and remarkable entry in 
French records this division between ' Philippa de Coucy, 
Duchess of Ireland, and her sister Mary de Coucy, wife of 
the late Sir Henry de Bar,' daughters of the Sire de Coucy and 
' Madam Isabel of England his wife,' of their parents ' estates 
on both sides of the channel. A whole mass of Cheshire 
charters is brought to light by an Inspeximus of 1 400 in favour 
of St. Mary's, Chester. We may note, in connection with 
those which have already appeared in the Ancestor, one of 
Richard son of Richard son of Gralam de Lostok, to which 
* Waryn le Grovenor ' is a witness, and one relating to Bud- 



PATENT ROLLS OF HENRY IV. 165 

worth and the Grosvenors. Again, another Inspeximus reveals an 
important charter of King Stephen in favour of the Argentine 
family, while the history of religious houses receives important 
illustration from the early charters to the priories of St. 
Botolph's, Colchester, and St. Denys by Southampton. A 
curious licence for the chaplain and parishioners of ' St. Mary 
Colchirche by the Great Conduit, London, in the font of which 
St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Edmund of Bury, king, 
were baptized, and in which, out of reverence for these martyrs, 
divine service with music has long been celebrated daily.' 
We meet with * St. Thomas Martyr ' again at Winchelsea, 
where the parson of his church succeeds in obtaining Christ's 
share ('Cristesshare') of the catch of fish, which the king's 
bailiffs had been taking for his use. The ' share ' system of 
fishing on the Sussex coast is, we may add, ancient and peculiar. 
Mr. Fowler, the editor of this volume, has compiled the long 
and valuable index that we look for in the volumes of this 
series. 

J. H. R. 



1 66 THE ANCESTOR 



OUR OLDEST FAMILIES 
VIII. THE LANGTONS 




MR. BOSWELL tells us that Doctor 
Johnson was not the less ready to 
love Mr. Bennet Langton for his being of a 
very ancient family. Few men kept a 
straighter back before their fellows than the 
son of the Lichfield bookseller, but for him 
the angelic hierarchy, the dukes and the 
judges of the land, the king and the squire 
were part of the ordered constitution of things in which he 
put his faith. A squire of an old race of manor-lords was to 
Johnson a thing as necessary as beautiful, and he would say 
with visible pleasure, ' Langton, sir, has a grant of free warren 
from Henry the Second, and Cardinal Stephen Langton, in 
King John's reign, was of this family.' 

Four generations have since been added to the long line 
of Langtons, and no antiquary has thrown doubt upon that 
antiquity of race for which Johnson loved the more the tall 
young man from Trinity College c whose mind was as exalted 
as his stature.' It is true that the grant of free warren from 
Henry II. comes not to hand, and Cardinal Stephen Langton, 
whose birth is unknown, cannot any more be reckoned 
amongst the uncles of Langton of Langton. That descent 
in the male line from the twelfth century, whose rare survival 
these articles will show, was accorded very readily by the 
genealogists of Johnson's day, a parchment roll with an onion- 
string of ancestral names being held as evidence enough ; but 
Langton of Langton can show better proof than the illumin- 
ated imaginings of the Elizabethan heralds. 

That Langton has been of Langton in unbroken descent 
carries the pedigree at once far into the middle ages. In 
Lincolnshire such a family stands alone. The Welbys are 
indeed owners of Welby, but, as we believe, not by inherit- 
ance, nor have they joined their sufficiently long pedigree 
to the old Welbys of Moulton. The Skipwiths, although 



OUR OLDEST FAMILIES 167 

their descent from Robert de Estoteville, a baron of the 
conquest, may be put aside as worthless, might be taken 
to a twelfth-century forefather, but they rose in Yorkshire and 
can no longer be regarded as a Lincolnshire family. Yet 
Langton lives at Langton, a Lincolnshire squire who owns by 
inheritance the parish from which his remote forefathers took 
their surname. 

Of the many Langtons in England which amaze genealo- 
gists who attempt a history of any family of the name this 
Langton is Langton by Spilsby in the hundred of Hill and 
county of Lincoln, formerly called Langton by Partney. It 
is Langetune in Domesday Book, and was then held by Hugh 
the fat, Earl of Chester, belonging to his manor or honour 
of Greetham. The fact that no tenant at Langton is named 
in the survey has saved the pedigree makers the necessity 
of deriving the manorial family in the approved style from 
the man of Domesday. 

Some time during the nineteenth century Langton shel- 
tered an unworthy owner under whom the ancient charters 
and muniments of the family, known to have been in existence 
a hundred years since, ceased to be. The pedigree therefore 
begins with documents which must be sought for far and 
wide. 

An early Langton deed is found in a certain register 
registrum antiquissimum in the muniment room of the dean 
and chapter of Lincoln. In it Osbert of Langetun gives two 
oxgangs of land in Langetun and one toft to the dean and 
chapter. By the witnesses' names a date between 1196 and 
1205 may be added. 

The Bardsey cartulary now in the British Museum sup- 
plies more than one Langton evidence. Matthew son of 
Osbert of Langeton gives to God and St. Oswald and the 
monks of Bardsey the homage and service of Walter son of 
Richard of Hagwrdingham and of Walter's heirs and one 
oxgang of land in the territory of Hagwrdingham, for the 
safety of his soul and the soul of Osbert his brother. Hag- 
worthingham is hard by Langton. By another charter Osbert 
of Langton confirms to the monk that oxgang which Matthew 
his brother gave. By a third charter Gilbert son of Osbert 
of Langeton confirms his uncle Matthew's gift. 

The Kirkstead cartulary gives us, as witnesses to a grant 
of lands in Langton, Osbert of Langton and Gilbert and 



1 68 THE ANCESTOR 

Robert and Richard his sons. This Gilbert son of Osbert 
was party to a fine of lands in Langton 8 June 1202. When 
we consider that we have the name of Gilbert's grandfather 
Osbert this family of Langton is thereby established as one of 
which three known generations were living in the twelfth 
century. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Gilbert 
of Langton presents Eustace the clerk to the church of Lang- 
ton, the advowson of which is still in the hands of the family. 
The manor of Langton also appears in the thirteenth century 
apparently as a reputed manor held of the Lord of Greetham. 
Under Edward III. John of Langton is lord of Langton in an 
assize roll, and one court roll at least remains to show that the 
Langtons held a court of their manor of Langton. 

Gilbert of Langton and Richard his brother are witnesses 
to a charter of 1220, and from this Richard it would appear 
that the line of Langton went on. In 45 Henry III. John of 
Langton claimed the fifth part of an inheritance of lands in 
Mumby and elsewhere as son and heir of Richard of Langton, 
whose mother was Sara, one of the five aunts and heirs of 
Alice of Mumby. These Mumby lands descended with the 
family of Langton, and in the fourteenth century we have our 
Langtons of Langton named amongst the heirs of Mumby 
in charter and inquest. 

From thence onwards the pedigree goes, supported by a 
sufficient body of evidences. The visiting heralds enrolled 
with more or less accuracy the names of its generations, but 
history has no great business with the house of Langton of 
Langton. The Langtons lived on and by their land, and 
kept so fast a hold upon it that parish and advowson have 
never departed from them, and it will be observed again and 
again that these tenacious landowners do not as a rule make 
history. That Bennet Langton was the much beloved friend 
of Doctor Johnson alone makes their fame general, and their 
most famous deed was a-doing when Bennet Langton and 
Topham Beauclerk roused Johnson with their knocking and 
carried away the doctor in the early morning for the famous 
frisk in Covent Garden. 

Bennet Langton of Langton, of whom it was said he was 
like the stork on one leg in Raphael's cartoon, married the 
countess dowager of Rothes, brought up, and by tradition 
spoiled, three sons and six daughters, and died, having left 
behind him notes of certain conversations with Doctor Johnson, 




OUR OLDEST FAMILIES 169 

for all monument of abilities from which his disappointed 
friends looked for something heavier and less interesting. 
His picture may be seen in this present volume of the Ancestor. 
His second son became Massingberd of Gunby, and his great- 
great-grandson Bennet Rothes Langton is now of Langton 
Hall with sons to follow him. 

O.B. 



IX. THE WROTTESLEYS 

In 1897 the old house of the Wrottesleys 
took fire and blazed in a westerly wind 
until all within the walls was burned out. 
On the first floor were the charters and 
muniments of a family which has lived upon 
its manor of Wrottesley for three and twenty 
generations, and of these nothing could be 
saved. But of the shrivelled parchments 
and grey ash of papers the immortal past remains, and the 
work of a son of the house has now put the Wrottesley evi- 
dences beyond the malice of a bonfire. 

The history which General Wrottesley has at last brought 
to an end enables us to add Wrottesley of Wrottesley to our 
roll of the oldest families. 1 Like Langton of Langton, Wrot- 
tesley can show his manor and lands of Wrottesley for his first 
evidence of family antiquity. This Wrotelei Robert of Stafford 
had at the great survey and gave it to the monks of Evesham 
by a deed of which a copy remains, a deed which Eyton calls 
a priceless document, fortifying history and helping chronology 
with its long list of witnesses. 

Until the disaster by fire there was at Wrottesley a deed 
which begins the history of the present house of Wrottesley. 
By it Adam, abbot of Evesham, granted Wrottesley and 
Loynton to Simon son of Robert of Coctune or Coughton. 
Eyton assigned to this deed the date of 1163 or 1164. Its 
witnesses were most of them of the household of Richard du 
Hommet, the constable of Normandy, under whom in Nor- 
mandy Bertram de Verdun, head of the house of Verdun, held 

1 A History of the family of Wrottesley of Wrottesley, co. Stafford, by Major- 
General the Hon. George Wrottesley. Reprinted from the Genealogist. 
Exeter : Wm. Pollard & Co. (1903). 



i 7 o THE ANCESTOR 

his lands, and from these Verduns General Wrottesley derives 
his race. 

For the beginning of the house of Wrottesley in England 
we go further into the history of Evesham and its abbots. 
JEthelw'ine, whose race is in his name and whom even the 
Frenchmen feared, died Abbot of Evesham in 1077. Followed 
him a brisk young clerk from Normandy over sea, one Walter, 
a monk of Cerisy, who was Lanfranc's chaplain. The Eve- 
sham chronicle, under the hand of a prior of King John's time, 
has a phrase or two concerning Walter which make some 
picture of him. We read that Walter came young to his 
abbacy and that in worldly affairs he was less prudent than 
was needful. As a lord of land he refused the homage of 
many worthy folk who had held under JEthelwine, and gave 
their lands to kinsfolk of his own who had followed him to 
his fat preferment. Under the new law of the conqueror the 
abbey must needs find spears for the king's host, and Walter 
was careful that if the abbey lands fed armed men they should 
at least feed those of his own blood. 

In Warwickshire, in Gloucestershire and in Worcestershire 
Walter the abbot enfeoffed Ralph his brother, and Ralph is 
found in Domesday Book. 

To this Ralph succeeded William his son about 1129, for 
a William and Robert his brother pay fines for their father's 
lands in Warwickshire on the pipe roll of 3 1 Hen. I., and 
General Wrottesley holds that we have here the succession to 
the fief of Ralph the abbot's brother. About twenty years 
later two brothers appear, one Robert of Cocton and William 
his brother, being witnesses to a Warwickshire grant made be- 
tween 1151 and 1158. Here Robert is the elder, and a 
third generation appears to be indicated. From William the 
younger of these brothers the line of the Wrottesley pedi- 
gree seems clear, for he is the William, father of Simon the 
feoffee of Wrottesley. 

Simon seems never to have lived at Wrottesley. Simon 
de Verdun is found as a witness to deeds in the Kenilworth 
cartulary, together with Bertram de Verdun his chief, and the 
suggestion that this Simon was the Wrottesley ancestor is 
borne out by the fact that William of Wrottesley, son of 
Simon, is sometimes called William de Verdun. That Simon 
who had Wrottesley was a Verdun is shown us also by the 
arms of his descendants, whose seals bear the Verdun fret. 



OUR OLDEST FAMILIES 171 

The surname of Wrottesley appears in the next genera- 
tion to Simon, whose son William, succeeding him before 
1199, has surnames at his choice, being called at various dates 
William of Wrottesley, William de Verdon and William fitz 
Simon, but Coughton, Verdon, Simmons and the like are dis- 
carded at last, and Hugh son of this William is Hugh of 
Wrottesley and Wrottesleys all who follow him are. 

Hugh of Wrottesley, first of the name, came nigh to being 
the last, for after the battle fought hard by the abbey of 
Evesham, from which he held his lands, he was in flight with 
the disinherited enemies of the king. Good fortune however 
followed Hugh. He came safely away from amongst the 
spears and soon afterwards was allowed to redeem his lands 
by a money payment. Within three years of Evesham fight 
he was a lawful man again and foreman of a jury to boot. 
His son William is presented to us first in the roll of forest 
pleas as one of many who were ' customary malefactors of 
venison,' but his tide of Master, borne by him on his succes- 
sion to his lands, seems to show that a university had bred 
this poacher. William is a knight, as his father was, and of 
his knighting at Westminster with Edward Prince of Wales 
.and 267 others we have detailed accounts. General Wrottes- 
ley has preserved a drawing of his seal which bears that 
Verdun fret which his son's marriage was to exchange for 
the shield of Basset. That son William of Wrottesley, the 
third of the name, married in 1313 Joan, daughter and heir of 
Roger Basset, a grand-daughter of that Roger, the baron of 
Drayton, who had been slain at Evesham fighting beside her 
husband's grandfather in the cause of Montfort and the 
barons. 

William's son Hugh, second of that name, is the ornament 
of all his line. He would have gone crusading when in 1334 
a crusading host of English and French knights had been 
gathered. King Edward was taking ship and King Philip 
had sworn to keep his banner for three years in Syria, but 
the fleet never left port and the Christian knights were not 
long without other employment. A period follows in which 
Sir Hugh is dipped in the suits at law which burdened life 
in his time for the landowner. He had the hearty Stafford- 
shire ways of which the plea rolls tell us so much, and his 
suits with his cousins the Pertons are diversified by his going 
with many men behind him to the house of a Perton, whom 



172 THE ANCESTOR 

he beat until his life was despaired of. This duty to a kins- 
man performed, Sir Hugh raised money upon a mortgage 
and took his whole merry company with him to the wars 
in Scotland, where he was one of those who before the 
castle of Dunbar came early and late and found black Agnes 
at the gate. The next year gave him better work. In 1338 
he crossed with the king to Antwerp, with his brother and 
his following. He seems to have been one of those 'good 
fellows and bold ' who with Mauny took the castle of Thun 
1'Evesque by surprise, and his grateful king gave him full 
pardon for the death of cousin John of Perton, who had died 
of his trouncing. With his pardon in his pocket Sir Hugh 
came home to Wrottesley and made a spirited attempt to 
collect rents there upon the manor, which he had mortgaged 
to his father-in-law. Failing in this our soldier was in straits 
for travelling money, but that was not long lacking. The 
king's taxing of the country's wool by taking one sack in two 
had filled the countryside with hidden wool sacks. From 
amongst the Wrottesley tenants this good landlord dragged to 
light 27^- sacks. These he brought to Ipswich and smuggled 
abroad without paying the heavy duty. Thus happily carried 
over to the wars Sir Hugh, a good knight in the field, 
might snap fingers at the indignant sheriffs and port-customers. 
He followed Messire Gautier de Mauny, and where Messire 
Gautier was there were ever feats of arms of the kind which 
Froissart loves to tell. But we feel that General Wrottesley, 
a soldier by trade, is not a little scandalized by actions such 
as that before Vannes, when the English earls planted their 
standards in the ground and drew back to encourage the 
men of Vannes to sally out to pluck up those standards, 
which thing the Frenchmen were not slow to do, advancing 
on the standards and leaving their town gates handsomely 
open to draw a counter attack in which the Baron of Staf- 
ford was taken between the town gates and the outer barrier. 
This was in 1342. In 1343 Sir Hugh is honoured by appear- 
ing as the subject of a letter from the pope to King Edward. 
A truce had been made, and during that ill-kept truce Ralph 
de Montfort and others had been seized in their beds by 
an English child of sin named Hugh de Wrotelesse. 

At Crecy the Black Prince was followed, according to 
Froissart, by all the flower of the English knighthood. 
Amongst these knights was Sir Hugh of Wrottesley, and two 



OUR OLDEST FAMILIES 173 

years later he was one of the four and twenty knights who 
with the king and the prince first buckled the garter round 
their legs. In 1350 Sir Hugh and his fellow knights kept the 
solemn feast of the garter, clad in coats of russet powdered with 
green garters, with garters on their right legs and mantles on 
their backs having the shield of St. George upon them. At 
this high tide of his fortunes Sir Hugh, who was bearing the 
arrears of less fortunate days, was able to bring his difficulties 
before his prince and obtained a quittance under the privy 
seal which silenced his creditors of the royal exchequer. The 
incident of the wool sacks was wiped out with others, royal 
grants put money in his purse, and he might have gone far 
had he been able to bridle in himself the ruffian whom we 
find under the skin of most of these Staffordshire gentry. 

The man with whom the new garter-knight first fell out 
was, according to Staffordshire custom, his kinsman and enemy. 
Philip of Lutteley, sheriff of the county, was husband to 
Katherine, a sister of the John of Perton who died of his 
hurts after Sir Hugh's affray in 1338. On entering upon his 
shrievalty Philip gathered his men to wake Sir Hugh by night, 
to collect from him the outstanding crown debts. The cam- 
paigner of Crecy was, however, a badger not easily surprised 
in his earth, and the sheriff met him at daybreak on Dunstone 
Heath, with his Crecy men at his back. The sheriff and his 
clerk went down together, Philip being struck through the 
heart with a Cologne sword. 

It was long before the law stirred itself in the case. Man- 
slaying in Staffordshire was not so rare a matter that the 
officers of the crown must hasten to see justice done. But in 
Easter term two widows of the slain men appealed in the 
court of King's Bench, and unluckily for the garter-knight the 
chief justice was a neighbour and kinsman of the dead sheriff, and 
moreover a Staffordshire Ahab whose broad lands had hungry 
borders. Sir Hugh prepared for flight by disposing of his 
personal estate, but he lingered too long upon his lands and 
was taken alive to the Marshalsea. 

Before all prisons Sir Hugh might have preferred the 
Marshalsea, for the marshal was none other than his old leader 
Sir Walter Mauny. After six weeks of restraint, which might 
pass pleasantly enough in telling over the days of their foreign 
raids, Sir Hugh broke his lightly-barred prison and hurried 
over to Brittany, where he became prisoner again, and this 



i 7 4 THE ANCESTOR 

time to the French. Now he was in pitiful case. If a prisoner 
would eat he must eat at his own cost. Sir Hugh was penni- 
less, and his captors could hardly have been well pleased to 
find that the garter-knight in their hands had no means of 
calling up a penny for his ranson. Had he broken prison 
again he must avoid his own lands, where he was an outlaw 
whom the law might hang without trial, and the law capable 
of such harshness was in the hands of Chief Justice Shareshull, 
whose son-in-law's two uncles owed their deaths to Sir Hugh. 
But this ruffian must have been a stout soldier, and war was in 
the air. King Edward annulled the outlawry in 1354, and in 
the next year pardoned him comprehensively for the deaths of 
the sheriff and another, for harbouring murderers, for a third 
slaying and for any poaching in the royal forests of which he might 
probably be guilty. In return for this clemency Sir Hugh 
appeared in the King's Chancery and handsomely agreed, 
under a recognizance, not to molest for the future either the 
Lutteleys or Pertons. As Sir Hugh was presumably at work 
on Poitiers field, the king himself might be well pleased with 
the peacemaking. 

Sir Hugh was to see more service over sea. He was a 
banneret in the king's household when the army hard by 
Chartres met that great storm of 1359 whose hailstones slew 
men and horses, the storm which made men deem the end of 
the age at hand. In 1363 he was at home again. His de- 
scendant, General Wrottesley, being ware of his habits, suspects 
him of the deaths of three Staffordshire men in a matter 
arising out of the old Perton feud, but in 1366 he was away 
to fight at Najara the next year. This was his last campaign, 
and he came back to Staffordshire where some new feuds with 
his neighbours the Peshalls brightened the last years of the 
old warrior. A new picture of the amenities of Staffordshire 
shows us Sir Adam of Peshall riding home from the crowning 
of King Richard II. in mortal fear of Sir Hugh of Wrottesley, 
who was laying ambushes of armed men along the high roads 
in order to kill and murder the said Adam. Yet the Peshalls 
were keener in feud than the Pertons, for Sir Hugh himself 
admits that they chased his men from Albrighton to Wrottes- 
ley, crying tuez les larons de Wrottesleye^ and praying aloud to 
God that old Sir Hugh might be there so that they could 
make an end of him. How a following was raised for these 
frays is seen in the story of William Godyngton, who failed 



OUR OLDEST FAMILIES 175 

to turn out in his harness against Sir Hugh. For punishing 
such unneighbourly slothfulness the young Peshalls came to 
Godyngton's house and ravished his daughter. 

After all these ridings and slayings at home and abroad 
Sir Hugh died in 1381 tucked up in his own bed at Wrottes- 
ley. 

Sir Hugh is followed by fighting men sprung from him. 
His great-grandson Sir Walter was, as his tombstone in the 
Grey Friars told, strenuus in armis cum comite PFarwiri, and was 
left after Warwick's death in the awkward position of holding 
Calais for a broken faction. Richard, son of Sir Walter, had 
one of those curious Tudor licences to remain covered in his 
sovereign's presence, which, granted for some * diseases and 
infirmities in the hed,' have been magnified by the descendants 
of more than one of the grantees to be grants of the heredi- 
tary right to come to court with the hat on. 

The part played by the Wrottesley of the day in the great 
civil war was a feeble one. Sir Walter Wrottesley, the first 
baronet, had his estate sequestered, yet his most open act 
against the parliament was but the sending of a horse to 
Prince Maurice, when 'he durst do no other,' but the old 
Staffordshire spirit seems to have burnt out. The very family 
feud at this time with the Levesons shows itself in little 
more than hard words, Mr. Thomas Leveson calling Walter 
Wrottesley fool and knave, and Wrottesley countering him by 
sending private word to the authorities that Leveson was ' going 
to France to breed up his son in Popery.' The baronetcy, be 
it said, was won by no services in field or council but was 
frankly bought and sold for some 300. 

The ninth baronet added a new tide to the old family 
honours. Sir John Wrottesley, born in 1771, was bred a 
soldier and served in Flanders in 1793. He ^ the army to be 
a country gentleman, a banker, a politician and a political 
economist. His patent of a peerage was given him by Lord 
Melbourne in 1838. The second lord was a lawyer and 
astronomer, and sat in the president's chair of the Royal 
Society. Of his five sons each one was a soldier, and two 
died in the field, one in the Kaffir war of 1852 and one at the 
siege of Bomarsund. To his third son, a distinguished officer 
of engineers, we owe the history of the family, and a mass of 
printed and edited records which will make the task of the 
future historians of Staffordshire an enviable one. His nephew, 



176 THE ANCESTOR 

the present Lord Wrottesley, is Wrottesley of Wrottesley, 
twenty-second in the male line from Simon who had Wrottes- 
ley under King Henry II., and the heir male of a knight 
founder of the Garter. 

O. B. 



WHAT IS BELIEVED 

Under this beading the Ancestor will call the attention of press 
and public to much curious lore concerning genealogy, heraldry 
and the like with -which our magazines, our reviews and news- 
papers from time to time delight us. It is a sign of awaken- 
ing interest in such matters that the subjects with which the 
Ancestor sets itself to deal are becoming Isss and less the sealed 
garden of a few workers. But upon what strange food the 
growing appetite for popular archeology must feed will be 
shown in the columns before us. Our press, the best-informed 
and the most widely sympathetic in the world, which watches 
its record of science, art and literature with a jealous eye, still 
permits itself, in this little corner of things, to be victimized by 
the most recklessly furnished information, and it would seem 
that no story is too wildly improbable to find the widest cur- 
rency. It is no criticism for attacking' s sake that we shall 
offer, and we have but to beg the distinguished journals from 
which we shall draw our texts for comment to take in good 
part what is offered in good faith and good humour. 

f I ^HAT a genealogical myth has more lives than pussy's nine 
is well known to genealogists, but we confess that we 
believed in our editorial vanity that the legend of the Gros- 
venors and of their descent from Gilbert the grand huntsman, 
nephew of Hugh Earl of Chester, was lying scotched by our 
article in the Ancestor s first number. But we undervalued the 
forest hardiness of Gilbert. He knocked at our door yester- 
day in a long type-written article upon ' the Grosvenor Family,' 
which began gallantly with 

A.D. 876. The patriarch of the Grosvenor family was an uncle of 
Rollo the Dane, and accompanied his nephew in the conquest of Normandy. 

' Gilbert le Grosvenator ' soon followed, and Robert his son and 
Henry his grandson and Harry's son Raufe, ' who adhered to 
the cause of the Empress Maud.' Our would-be contributor 
had no record of Raufe's death, but that record is not of the 
first importance. A record of his existence upon earth is 
Raufe's more immediate need. Raufe's son Robert was in the 



i 7 8 



THE ANCESTOR 



holy wars and mentioned in despatches for his conduct at 
Messina, Cyprus and the siege of Acre. ' We know little 
more of the lives of these early Grosvenors than the bare 
record of the wars in which they took part,' says our author, 
with a measure of truth, for we have indeed the record of 
the wars, and it is certainly a fact that they are sterile of details 
which should illustrate Gilbert's line. 

* * * 

The following letter from Lady Russell of Killowen has 
been addressed to the editor of the Pilot. We reproduce it 
here as it concerns our Ancestor, together with a letter which 
has been addressed by us in answer. 

ARMORIAL SCANDALS 

SIR, In an article entitled ' Quarterlies,' which appears in your issue of 
22nd inst., the writer, speaking of what he calls 'Armorial Scandals,' proceeds 
to say that ' only a few years ago Lord Russell of Killowen, an Irishman with- 
out even a tradition of English ancestry, was granted the arms and crest of 
the Russell Dukes of Bedford.' I beg to say that Lord Russell did not 
receive a ' grant,' but a confirmation of the arms and crest which had been used 
by his family for generations. 

In proof of this, we have an old Irish chalice bearing the date 1 640, on 
which are engraved the names of George Russell of Rathmullen and Maria 
Taaffe his wife, with the arms of Russell and of Taaffe, the former being 
exactly the same as the Bedford arms. 

According to Burke, the Russells of the County of Down were originally 
Anglo-Normans, the founder of the family (one of the Kingston-Russells, 
from whom the Dukes of Bedford are also descended) having come to Ireland 
with De Courcy in the reign of Henry II. 

The Russells of Killough or Killoe, in the County of Down, were Barons 
of Ulster long before the Kingston-Russells became Earls of Bedford. Richard 
Russell was Chief Justiciary of Ulster in 1385. I hope you will correct this 
statement. 

ELLEN RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN. 

TADWORTH COURT, TADWORTH, SURREY, 
24 August, 1903. 

SIR, As the writer of your review of the quarterlies relied upon an 
article in the Ancestor for support of his statement concerning the arms of 
Russell of Killowen and the ' armorial scandal ' consequent upon them, it 
were well that Lady Russell's denial of the facts should be taken up by me, 
the first offender. 

Concerning the grant of arms, which Lady Russell prefers to call a confir- 
mation, I shall still prefer my own word until Lady Russell can assure me that 
the arms of Russell of Bedford, plus a green border engrailed, have been in use 
in the late Lord Russell's family ' for generations ' and, more especially, for 
the generations immediately before him. Her own letter only tells us that a 



WHAT IS BELIEVED 179 

George Russell of Rathmullen was in 1 640 using the shield of the Duke of 
Bedford without even the modest difference of a border, and it does not tell 
us that the Russells of Killowen have established and registered any descent 
from this impudent person. If they have done so, the blame for their 
personal share in the assumption is shifted to the shoulders of George Russell, 
who was certainly using arms which did not belong to him. The 'armorial 
scandal ' and the heading under which you print Lady Russell's letter may 
well be allowed to stand lies then at the official door from which issued 
this precious grant or confirmation. 

But even if we accept every or nearly every point of Lady Russell's letter, 
the position of a review which refuses to accept Lord Russell's arms as any- 
thing but an armorial scandal will yet remain unchallenged. Let us allow 
that Lord Russell was descended from George of Rathmullen who used the 
Duke of Bedford's arms ; let us, without asking one whit of proof for so 
magnificent a pedigree, allow George to be a descendant of the Russells of 
Killough ' who were barons of Ulster long before ' the Duke of Bedford's 
family came by a title. Let us admit, without understanding what it may 
concern our enquiry, that a bearer of this very common surname was Chief 
Justiciary of Ulster in 1385. And last of all let us admit, without a shadow 
of reason for the belief, that all Russells in County Down ' were originally 
Anglo-Normans, the founder of the family (one of the Kingston-Russells, 
from whom the Dukes of Bedford are also descended) having come to Ireland 
with De Courcy in the reign of Henry II.' 

Admitted all these pleasant unlikelihoods, the case for Lord Russell's arms 
is then finally disposed of ; Killowen is left without lion or scallop shell. 
For the Duke of Bedford's pedigree from the Russells of Kingston-Russell b 
as impudent in its way as any assumption of arms by poor George Russell of 
Rathmullen. It is, in the language of Mr. J. Horace Round, who is always 
so very harsh with such toys, an ' egregious imposture," or in the milder 
language of Sanford and Townsend, which might be applied to the Irish 
pedigree from De Courcy's companion in arms, it 'lacks nothing except 
historic proof.' 

The arms used by George of Rathmullen and granted to Lord Russell of 
Killowen with an inconsiderable difference are those of the Bedford Russells, 
whose earliest known ancestor is Henry Russell of Weymouth, burgess of 
Weymouth in 1425 and part owner of a ' barge ' called the James of Wey- 
mouth in 1445. They appear first in the great governing house sprung from 
this Henry, and if we follow the ancient laws of arms the Duke of Bedford 
alone can make a valid grant of them. 

The Russells of Killowen claim their arms as the descendants of Russell 
of Kingston-Russell. This at least is made clear by Lady Russell's letter. 
From that family, we believe, they have as yet established no descent, nor is it 
remotely probable that they will ever be able to follow this ancestral pixy path 
to such an end. But when they claim arms as the descendants of the Russells 
of Kingston-Russell, they might at least ascertain what arms were borne by 
their adopted ancestors. They will find that the arms of their adopted ances- 
tors were strangely unlike those of the Dukes of Bedford, whose arms date 
from an earlier period than the attempt to connect their family with an early 
Norman house. 

THE EDITOR OF THE ANCESTOR. 



180 THE ANCESTOR 

The death of a gentleman of ancient family, the Rev. 
Richard Dayrell, rector of Lillingstone Dayrell near Bucking- 
ham, was noted very widely by the press, round which went 
this curious note by the genealogical journalist : 

By his death another link in the long line of the Dayrells of Lillingstone 
is broken. At one time the members of the family were very extensive land- 
owners in Bucks, the last possessor of the manor, before it changed hands, 
having been the thirty-ninth male descendant of the Elais Dayrell who 
flourished there about 1195. The Dayrell pedigree extends back to the time 
of Richard I. Six members of the Dayrell family have been rectors of 
Lillingstone. 

A link in the long line of the Dayrells of Lillingstone 
Dayrell can hardly be said to be broken by the death of one 
who, descended from a younger branch, the Dayrells of Shudy 
Camps, was but a seventh cousin of the Lillingston family. 
The great antiquity of this family is beyond doubt, but the 
early generations of its pedigree are hardly ascertained. No 
claims of descent from ' Elais ' (V) Dayrell has ever before 
been set forth. For Elias or Ellis Dayrell is supposed to have 
died without issue. Even if we allow each step in the pedi- 
gree as proved, the estimate of thirty-nine generations from 
1195 is an absurd one. Three generations to a century, a 
liberal allowance, gives us twenty-one generations, which will 
be found nearer the truth than the thirty-nine which would 
suffice to carry a man's ancestry to the seventh century. 

* * * 

We have spoken before of the curious information that 
is almost sure to be elicited by interviewing a 'celebrity at 
home.' Here, for instance, is a delightful story, the result of 
such an interview with Lord Norton. The subject of it is 
Mr. Gladstone's thirst for extracting information from every 
one. 

Meeting Lord Leigh (Lord Norton's brother-in-law) one day at Hams, 
and being aware that he possessed some fine oaks at Stoneleigh, he asked : 
' Have you any theory, Lord Leigh, about the age of oaks ? ' 'I have several 
oaks that are above a thousand years in age,' answered Lord Leigh. ' And 
how do you know that they are over a thousand years old ? ' persisted the 
ex-Premier. ' Because I have several gospel-oaks, and the old Saxon mission- 
aries preached under them more than eight hundred years ago, and they are 
not likely to have chosen young oaks.' ' That is good sense,' said Gladstone. 

This conversation appears to belong to 1895, so that 'old 
Saxon missionaries,' it would seem, were preaching to the 



WHAT IS BELIEVED 181 

benighted heathen of Warwickshire about the time of the 
Norman Conquest. We had always imagined that Mr. 
Gladstone was recognized as a great authority on English 
Christianity, but we doubt if even his ' good sense ' will 
commend itself to those responsible for the ecclesiastical 
section in the Victoria History of Warwickshire. 

* * 

The visit of the ' Souvenir Normand ' to Hastings a few 
weeks ago was the occasion, as would of course be expected, 
of search being made in the neighbourhood for families of 
Norman descent and not in vain. Not only a local organ 
of the press, but a London paper of prodigious circulation 
announced that * the young girls in Early Victorian costume ' 
provided by the management at Battle Abbey were * all of old 
Norman descent.' It was enough to make its late chatelaine^ 
the Duchess of Cleveland, turn in her grave when the pro- 
gramme revealed that among them were bearers of the Norman 
names of Ashton, Harrison, Crowther, Boger, Taylor, Porter 
and Fry. For even the phantom Roll of Battle, on which 
she worked so lovingly, appears to have unaccountably omitted 
these illustrious surnames. The inclusion of a daughter of 
Lord Brassey was only, perhaps, to be expected, while that of 
a Sackville afforded at least one name of Norman origin, even 
though the ancient family which bears it was originally called 
West, a name, by the way, which attained distinction much 
earlier than its simplicity would suggest. 

* * * 

Heraldic criticism is invited also by the great armorial 
windows in the * Abbots' Hall ' at Battle, for which its late 
owner, the Duchess of Cleveland, was responsible. Her 
Grace was keenly interested in heraldry and genealogy, 
witness her elaborate work on { The Battle Abbey Roll ' ; but 
the long series of coats recording the descent and alliances of 
the Vanes challenges comment as beginning with that of 
Howell ap Vane, followed by ' Vane et Powys.' Genealogical 
research has not as yet found any earlier ancestor for the 
dukes, earls, viscounts and barons of the name of Vane or 
Fane than Harry Vane who flourished as a Kentish yoeman or 
husbandman in the reign of Henry VI. His noble ancestors, 
princely Welshmen and knights of high deeds in the fields of 
France, still baffle enquiry. 



1 82 THE ANCESTOR 

Those who adopt, as we do in the series of ' Our oldest 
families,' descent in the male line as the criterion of a family's 
antiquity are sometimes reproached with excluding ' female 
descent.' We venture to think that the Battle ' show ' is a 
suggestive comment on such complaints. What, after all, do 
we mean when we speak of a man's family ? What does he 
mean himself when he says ' My family came over with the 
Conqueror ? ' or c went on crusade with Cceur de Lion,' or 
did any other of the correct things that one would wish one's 
family to have done ? One assumes that he is speaking of 
those from whom he descends in the male line. But he may 
have selected out of all the families from which he descends 
through females one particular family which he chooses to 
represent as his own. On what ground ? Neither the adop- 
tion of a family's name nor the inheritance of its property 
has anything to do with the matter. A man may 'represent,' 
through a female, a family without either bearing its name or 
inheriting any of its estates ; and, conversely, he may take 
its name and even inherit its property without being its actual 
representative, nay, without having a drop of its blood in his 
veins. Again, therefore, we ask which is a man's ' family ' ? 
It appears to us that if once we abandon the clear and simple 
test of male descent we are lost in a haze of speculation as to 
which family, among the myriad from which he is descended, 
a man is entitled to speak of as being his own. 



The collection of anecdotes for this section of the Ancestor 
has been for this quarter at least an anxious task. For long 
the prize for misrepresentation seems to abide with the 
Ancestor, in the pages of whose last volume a batch of hastily 
written { copy ' was straightened into good sense and bad his- 
tory by our excellent printers the result being that we sent 
perjured George of Clarence childless to his butt. We take 
this opportunity of restoring George's orphans to their rightful 
place and honours Edward, Earl of Warwick, a poor thing 
who could not say us nay, and Salisbury's countess 

. . . who would not die 
As a proud dame should do, courteously. 

We do so the more easily, as a great daily newspaper has dis- 
placed us from our bad eminence. 



WHAT IS BELIEVED 183 

It comes in an article upon ' Amesbury and Stonehenge,' this 
trouvaille of the year's third quarter, and never have we known 
history more boldly handled. The nuns of Amesbury ' mon- 
astery ' are the text upon which the story of the suppression 
of the monasteries is re-told with lush detail from evidences 
unfamiliar to Froude and to the Benedictine historian whose 
business it is to explain to us that King Henry VIII. 's char- 
acter was no better than that of Monsieur Combes. 



Amesbury, it would seem, alone amongst the religious 
houses, survived ' the wrath of the despotic king.' Edward 
VI. spared it, and Elizabeth and James let it flourish undis- 
turbed. In Dugdale's day it was still in being, and had he 
but known it the author of the Monasticon might have studied 
the usages of convents in an existing example rather than in 
ruined choirs and cloisters. Then came King Charles, and 
' Oliver Cromwell's hour.' 

That of course ended it, but not so easily. 

The last Prioress utterly refused to surrender, and the Protector's agents 
had to admit that ' the many ways of our poor wits . . . could not by any 
persuasion bring her to any conformity.' 

But the Prioress died, still loyal to her King, and doubtless then the 
Abbey was cast on that scrap heap of the lovely past in which Cromwell 
gloried. 



We know how loyalty to King Charles the martyr was 
ill-requited at the restoration, and King Charles II., his merri- 
ment unmoved by the death of the loyal prioress, ' doubtless ' 
left the abbey on the scrap-heap of the lovely past. Otherwise 
it would be flourishing to-day, and that we cannot well be- 
lieve, for we have visited Amesbury and seen nothing of abbey 

or scrap-heap. 

* 

In a parallel column of the same journal we have Mr. 
Andrew Lang, an Ancestor contributor in his day, protesting 
that the education of journalists is a pressing need. " At 
present any person who can read and write may become a 
journalist if he can induce editors to accept his contributions," 
a sentence which at first sight would appear to be written in 
jealousy of a brother historian, but that of course cannot be. 



184 



THE ANCESTOR 



A FIFTEENTH CENTURY ROLL OF ARMS 




Ermine two crossed battle-axes sable. MAYDYSTON. Myddyl- 



sex. 



Azure a cheveron ermine engrailed between three escallops 
silver with three roundels gules on the cheveron. JAF- 
FEREY GOODLUK. Lyticoll chyre. 

Ermine a chief sable indented, the three points in the chief 
being flowered. ADAME DOVYNT. Sowtbereychyre. 




Sable iij eglys of syhyr beke and fet gowlys with a chief silver 
indented. WYLYAM STOKYS. Eccex cbyre. 

Party indented sable and ermine with a cheveron gowlys frette 
ofgolde. JOHN MACWORTH. Staffordcbyre. 

Gold frette of gowlys with a fesse of azure indented in ermine. 
JOH'N GRENE. Torke cbyre. 



WHAT IS BELIEVED 



185 




Silver a chief gules indented with three crosslets fitchy [silver]. 

JOHN GARGRAWE. Lancaster cbyre. 
Silver an alaunde [a later hand has added or taolfe] sable leaping 

with a collar of gold about the neck. JOHN WOODZ. 

Kent cbyre. 
Wert a saltire silver engrailed between four crosslets pyccbe 

[fitchy] silver with a fleur de lys gold upon the saltire. 

JOHN DENYSSE. Somersset cbyre. 




Party (gules) and (sable) with a lion (silver. BILLERS). Leycester 
cbyre. [The colours and name are added in a later hand.] 

Gules a voided escutcheon silver with a bend sabyll ermyne. 
TOMAS QUYXLEY. Rycbemond cbyre. 

Party gules and silver with two bars countercoloured. 
ROBARDE NORTH FFOLKE. Torkecbyre. 



i86 



THE ANCESTOR 



TTL-TLr 





Gules a chief silver battled. WYLYAM FOSTER of Derham 

Bychoperyke. 
Silver a chief sable with two lions' heads rased of gold. GORGE 

STYDOLFE. Sowsex chyre. 
Gules three fleurs de lys silver with a chief vair. GORGE 

PALMYS. Torkcbyre. 




Party silver and gules with ij bewerys [beavers] sylwyr and 
gowlys counter golorys. TOMAS BARNEWELL. Sotherey chyre. 

Party cheveronwise, the point gules and the chief party gold 
and azure. [Blank] de Almayne. 

Sable two spotted lebardys of sylvoyr yn her kynde leaping saltire- 
wise. [Blank] de Galeys. 



WHAT IS BELIEVED 



187 




Gold and syhyr berle [burelly] with three cheverons sable en- 
grailed. SIR JOHN HARPLEY. Northfolkechyre. 

Silver a cheveron sable engrailed between three griffons' heads 
sable rased. SIR ROBARDE CHARLTON. Wylchyre. 

Azure three demilions ermine. TOMAS NEWMAN [NEWENHAM]. 
Norbampton cbyre. 




Party silver and sable a boar countercoloured. TOMAS BARE 

de Calays 
Paly silver and azure the lines joggled in bend. JOHN 

POSYNGEWORTH. 

Sable a saltire silver with the ends flowered between four leo- 
pards gold. WYLYAM DE AYNO. Oxynford cbyre. 



i88 



THE ANCESTOR 




A bend engrailed with three roundels thereon. [The roundels 

are probably of sable ermined with silver.] JOHN THORNE- 

BERY of Sowthereych . . . 
Gold with billets [of sable ermined with silver] and a dance 

sable. WYLYAM PERKYNYS of Barke chyre. 
Three gimel bars with a lion over all. [FAYRFAX in a later 

hand.] Torke chyre. 




SIR JOHN SANDRYS/>orte argente une crosse ragele de sabyll? 

SIR EDWARDE TROMPYNGTON porte aswre deux trompylys dore 

sivme de crosselettys de memys. 
SIR JOHN HARPEDENE porte gowlys une molet de argent a v 

poyntys perce de dore. 2 

1 The ends of the cross are drawn as trunked. 

2 In the trick a martlet is shown upon the gold. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS i! 




Lozengy vert and ermine with a lion gules. W. WELLYS. 
Paly silver and sable with a cheveron gules and a crosslet gold 

on the cheveron. RYCHARDE CURSUN. 
Ermine two bars gules with three scutcheons of gold over all. 

PYERSSE OF HALL. 




Silver a chief sable with a lion countercoloured. BORTON. 

[In a later hand TANNATT.] 
Sable a bend battled silver. JOHN MAYNSTON. 
Silver a fesse sable battled on both sides and fretted gules 

between three lions passant gules. TOMAS CODERYNGTON. 
Quarterly ermine and gules indented. SIR JOHN CHYDYOCC. 
Party indented and barry silver and gules countercoloured. 

SIR WYLYAM PEYTO. 
A fesse silver with the chief green and the foot gold and a 

lion gules over all. SIR WETYNGHAM. 



igo 



THE ANCESTOR 



Gules a cross checkered. TOMAS GLOWCESTYR. 

JOHN BOROWHOPPE forte argent une cbeverone de Fraunce [that 

is to say silver a cheveron azure with three fleurs de lys 

gold]. 

WATYR SKYRLOWE porte argent une croyse de sabyll pale fece seve. 
Barry green and silver. TOMAS HERTTYLL. 
Gules a cheveron silver with vj gymelys of sabyll [that is three 

gimel bars]. JOHN THROGMERTON. 
Paly silver and vert. TOMAS LANGLEY. 




Silver a trivet sable. SIR TOMAS TREWET. 
Quarterly azure and silver indented. NYCOLAS POYNYS. 
Party silver and gules with a chief sable and a lion passant 
gold thereon. JOHN KERK.EBY. 




Silver three roses gules and a chief gules with two synettys 

[cygnets] silver. 

Gold three leopards' heads sable. JOHN WALDYVE. 
Sable three pair of keys silver. RYCHARDE MAK.ENEY. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 



191 




Party and cheveronny azure and gules countercoloured with 
a crosslet fitchy silver. WYLYAM TAWK.E. Basyngestoke. 

JOHN BLENKYNSOPPE port argent unefese de sabyll iij garbys [de 
sabyll~\. 1 

Ermine an arblast gules. ARBLASTER. 




SIR RYCHARD MOLYNERYS port aseure une fer de molync dore. 
SIR TOMAS lord of STRATFELD port argent et asewre beurle une 

hone rampand de gowlys. 
SIR RYCHARD GETHEN port argent une cbeweron de aseure iij 

corbews de 



1 The trick gives a fleur de lys on the fesse. 
* The trick calls the birds revenys and they are drawn with spread wings. 



192 



THE ANCESTOR 




Azure three boars of silver. MATHEWE GOGH. 
Ermine three chessroolcs gules. HUMFREY SMERT. 
Sable a cheveron gules between three lewcys bedys rasyd of silver. 
NVCOLAS FYTZ JOHN. 




Gules a bend ermine. JOHN WALWAYNE. 

Silver a chief sable with a lion countercoloured. TOMAS 

BALLARD. 1 

Bendy gules and vert with a cheveron ermine. ROBARD 
ROLSTON. 

1 A later hand has added the name TANNATT. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 



'93 



Silver a trellis of three pales and three bars of sable with a 
chief sable and three mallets of silver thereon. 

Gules three organs gold. The armys of EWERST.' 

Gyronny silver and gules with a border of Cornwall. FETZ 
HERBARDE.' 

Wen ten scaloppys of sylvyr. THOMAS THORLEY. 

Masonry of gules mortared with gold and a chief sable with a 
demilion gold. 

Silver a lion porpull with a forked tail. RYCHARDE BALDYR- 



STON. 



Gules a bend vair and six escallops gold. HARRY WYLTON of 

Wylcbyre. 

Two crossed bones. NEWTON.' 
MAYSTER STEWYN OF THE SEE berytb asewre ij fecys owndy oj 

ermyne and no more. Torke cbyre. 




Gold and purpull plomte. MYDLAM in Coverdale. 

Sable a pale engrailed gold between six crosses formy silver. 

NYCOLL ALDYRCOK.E. 
[Silver] a quarter gules and a bend azure over all with three 

golden sheaves. 4 LAWRANCE FETTON. 



1 A later hand gives GRENFEILD as the name. The shield is that of 
GRENVII.LE. 

' The shield is that of PEVERELL. 

3 A later hand adds Derb. 

4 The quarter and the colours are added in a later hand. 



194 



THE ANCESTOR 




Gules three voided crosses formy and botonny gold with a 

chief vairy ermine and erminees. RYCHARD VERNEY.* 
Silver a cross wavy sable. TOMAS MOTFOUNT.* 
Party ermine and gules a saltire engrailed countercoloured. 
JOHN NORTON. 




Silver a lion gules with three hinder parts, one passant, one 
leaping and one rampant. [SHARiNOBURY. 3 ] 

Azure a crowned leopard of gold sitting with two bodies and 
one head [NOTTINGHAM 3 ]. 

Gules a chief indented silver : the two points of gules and one 
point of silver being each flowered. Over all is a fesse 
sable cut in the midst by the silver point. BALLARD. 
Chescbier. 

1 A later hand adds co. War. 
8 Or MOTSOUNT. 3 In a later hand. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 195 

Ermine a chief gules indented with three crowns of gold. SIR 

ROGER LECHE. Lancaster cbyre. 1 
Sable a fleur de lys silver out of a leopard's head of gold 

reversed. JOHN MORLAY. Lancaster cbyre. 
Quarterly gules and silver with a cross paty countercoloured. 

[JOHN HAIGHTON. Cbesb rt ] 

Gold a chief gules and a lion vair over all. LANGLEYE. Staf- 
ford cbyre. 
Silver two crossed burdens sable, the forks at the feet gold. 

THOMAS BURDON. Derbam cbyre. 
Quarterly gules and azure with a cross paty silver. JOHN 

SowMERS. 3 Sowtberey cbyre* 

Silver a chief gules with three roses set fessewise and counter- 
coloured. DAVY MATH EWE of Walys. 
Ermine three bars oferminees. 5 JAMYS BEDFFORD. Derbam 

cbyre. 
Azure with a flight of golden arrows points downward. 

WYLYAM OF STRONDE. Sowtberey cbyre. 
Vert an escutcheon silver and an orle of martlets silver. SIR 

TOMAS ERPYNGHAM. 
Silver a wolf rampant azure with a sable border bezanty. 

MAYSTER GYLBERD KYMER. Dorsset cbyre. 
Gules a fesse silver flowered on both sides. JOHN OF CAVYLE. 

Howden cbyre. 

Ermine a chief of gold and gules quarterly. JOHN PECCAM. 
Gules a cross vair. ALYXAUNDYR TWYER. Holdyrnesse. 
Ermine acinqfoil sable. JAMYS FLOWRE. Nortbamptone. . . . 
Gules a millrind cross gold. WYLYAM MOUNSEWYS. Holdyr- 
nesse. 
Party sable and silver cheveronwise with two silver cups in the 

chief. [Blank] Torkecbyre. 
Party gules and silver bendwise with three roses bendwise 

countercoloured (MACKWILLIAMS") de Almayne. 



1 The county is struck out by a later hand. 
3 In a later hand. 

3 Altered from Sowraerset. 

4 A later hand gives Norhamfton. 

5 That is of sable ermincd with silver. Here as elsewhere the blazon has 
no separate word for this fur. 

8 In a later hand. 



196 



THE ANCESTOR 



/w\ 





The armys of WEST [WH ERST struck out]. I port argent une 

cbewerond daunce de sabyll. Sowsex chyre. 
Quarterly azure and silver with a cross formy countercoloured 

and a leopard's head on the cross. NYCOLAS FERBY. 

Torke chyre. 
Sable three running leverers or greyhounds silver with collars 

on their necks. JOHN MAULEVERER of Allyrton. 




Sable a cokkeofsyhyr. TOMAS GRENWOD. Torke chyre. 
ROBARDE OTTYR beryth asewre iij ottrys passaunt of gold. Tork 

chyre. 
Silver two bars gules and a quarter gules with a trefoil of gold. 

WYLYAM WYNSENT. Derham chvre. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 197 




Burelly silver and gules with an orle of martlets 1 sable. 

MAYSTER TOMAS MORTON. York cbyre. 
Sable a lion silver armyd / gowlys with a forked tail. TOMAS 

WASTNEYS. Notyngbam cbyre. 
Silver a saltire of chains sable with a crescent in the chief. 

MAYSTER ELWETT. Yorke cbyre. 
Silver a bend gules engrailed with three leopards' heads * silver 

thereon. MAYSTER HARRY BOLLTON. Yorkecbyre. 
Gules a cheveron silver engrailed between three hounds silver 

sitting on their hind legs. TOMAS HOUNGATE. Yorke- 
cbyre. 
Ermine a saltire sable with a golden ring thereon wrought of a 

chain and an ermine tail within the ring. HARRY BARTON. 

Sowtbereychyre. 
SIR TOMAS GRENE beryth asewre iij bowckys passaunt of golde. 

North hamptoncbyre. 
Aberyth syhyr a cbefe entty of sabyll yn the cbefe a lebard passant 

of gold. [Blank] Sowtbereycbyre. 
WYLYAM OF NAUTON berytb gold iij borys of sabyll passaunt 

armyd wf syhyr. Yorkcbyre. 
Ermine a chief azure with three lioncels silver. SIR JOHN 

DEPDENE. 
Sable three gauntlets silver showing the palms and fingers of 

the hands within, and three silver rings linked in one 

another in the chief. RYCHARD BURTON. 
Gules three bends gold. The Armys of Manchestyr. 
Silver three escallops gules bendwise between two cotises sable. 1 

PYERSSE DELAHAYE. Yorkechyre. 

1 In the margin the birds are described as hethcockys. 

* A blazon in the margin describes the heads as rasyd. 

3 An error in the tricking shows the escallops as upon a silver bend. 



198 THE ANCESTOR 

Gold a boar sable under an oaktree vert cut off above the 

roots. JOHN CASSOUSE. Soutberey. 

Azure three ploughs silver. TOMAS SMETON. Yorkcbyre. 
Gold a lion gules. HUMFREY CHERLETON. Yorkchyre. 
Silver a hart rampant. [Blank] Yorkcbyre. 
Party cheveronwise gules and azure with three golden keys. 

MAYSTER ROGER KEYS. Yorkchyre. 
Nine pieces gules and ermine. DE ALMAYNE.' 
Gyronny ermine and sable. [Blank] York chyre. 
Bendy silver and gules with arched lines. LORD VAN KAPEI.L 

of Almayne. 
"The f eld of sabyll with three mitres of gold. Two silver gores 

or gussets from the sides of the shield cut the field of 

gules to a T shape. THE BYSCHOPPE OF BRYGWATER. 
(The felde] of gowlys and (syher and asure) werre (losange). 

(The armys of WAKYRLEY)" of Almayne (Northampton 

chyre]. 
Silver a bend sable with three sets of three linked rings of gold. 

[HuBERK.. 3 ] Leyscester chyre. 
Quarterly gold and azure with a silver falcon over all. JOHN 

MYCHELGROWE. Sousex chyre. 
Silver a cross gules with five lioncels of silver. COLWYLE. 

Sotherey chyre. 
Azure three golden lilies out of leopards' heads of gold. LORD 

CANTELOWE. 
Party sable and gold bendwise. HERE VAN APENZBERG de 

Almayne. 
Silver a bend gules with three round brooches of silver. 

WYLYAM ROSSELEYN. Yorkchyre. 
Lozengy gules and vair. The armys O/"WAKERLEY. 
Barry gold and gules. SIR WYLYAM TRACY. 
Silver three bears' heads of sable, muzzled and cut off at the 

neck. SIR RAYNOLD DE BERSON. 
Gold a patriarch's cross of azure set upon three steps. SIR 

RYCHARD BRYTTON. 



1 This appears as the bearer's name, but it more probably is meant to 
describe the shield as a German one. 

* The name and the words in brackets have been struck out. The trick 
is vair and lozengy after a confused fashion and has also been struck through. 
It is repeated more correctly seven shields further on. 

3 In a later hand. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 199 

[Traces of a barry field of gold and gules (?) and a silver (?) 

lion with a golden crown. Sir Hewe Morlay. 1 ] 
Azure three elephants 2 of gold standing upon golden crowns. 

REX ALYXAUNDRE de Almayne. 
Gules three cinqfoils gold, the field crusilly gold. RYCHARDE 

GRENE of Sowsex cbyre. 
Gules three bars of silver and sable gobony. SIR JOHN BARRE 

of Herfford cbyre. 
Gold three bars azure with a bend gules. SIR RYCHARD 

PENBRYGE of H erf or d cbyre. 
Party ermyne and wert y the green with gold drops. ROBARDE 

GRAYNDORE. Gloucester cbyre. 

Party silver and azure with a cheveron gules and three 

leopards gold thereon. THE BYSCHOPE OF LYNCOLLNE. 

Silver three mallets gules. The armys of CHEYPTON MALETT. 

Somerset cbyre. 

Green a monster 3 rampant silver. MARCHES STIRIE de Almayne. 
Silver a bend gules with cotises of gules and three pierced 
molets on the bend. SIR JOHN HAKE- 
LETT. Somerset cbyre. 

Party azure and gold with an eagle counter- 
coloured. LORD OF DEROLSEN de Al- 
mayne. 

[A foreign shield which is meant, doubtless, 
for what a German herald would term 
gules and silver ' gespickelt.'] LORD 
OF HUM ME de Almayne. 
Gold a hound rampant silver, sable above the 

waist. [ ~\ de Almayne. 

Party saltirewise azure and silver. 4 
Gules two bars sable each with a mate of 

gules. 6 Rex Welmarie d'Almaye. 
Barry of five pieces of gold indented with 

azure. An aide lord. 

Gules six martlets silver. TOMAS CLARELL. 
Torkcbyre. 

1 The shield and name struck out. 

1 The elephants are drawn as wild boars but with fan-like ears. 
' This monster is griffon-like but with a dragon's head and a bushier tail 
than belongs to a lion. 

4 A golden leopard in the chief has been erased. 

8 The mate is a miz-maze of the key pattern running along each bar. 




200 



THE ANCESTOR 



Sable a cross gold between four fleurs de lys silver. RYCHARD 
OF BANK, of Crawyn. 

Silver three cinqfoils gules with a quarter gules and a bend 
azure over all. WYLYAM DRYBY of Northfolk. 

Quarterly gules and gold with an engrailed cross counter- 
coloured. JOHN ERYTH of Kent chyre. 

Gules three swords of azure hiked with gold and stuck in a 
mount. [ ] REX DE of Almayne. 

Azure a sagettary of golde. KYNGE STEVENE that lyth at Fevyr- 
sam 

Gold two berysfete sable. 1 COMES DE HOYA. Hy Almayne 

Azure a lion barry * silver and gules of eight pieces. LANT 
GRAVIUS DE HASSIA ILLUSTRIS. Almayne. 




Gules a fesse vair between three fleurs de lys out of leopards' 

heads. LORD CANTLEY of aide tyme past. 

Silver a border gold and azure gobony. THE LORDE PRISSONY. 
Azure three bears' heads silver cut off at the neck between 

two flanches or voiders of silver with drops of gules. 

TOMAS GRENFELD. 

1 The bear's feet, or rather legs, are side by side, feet upward. 
3 A note describes the lion as mbbone. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 201 




Azure a lion ermine with a golden crown and a forked tail. 

SIR JOHN PECEHY. 
Silver three axes sable w' revyn byll bedys. WYLYAM CLYFFORD, 

Glowcestercbyre. 
Green with a lion gold. SIR JOHN ROBSARD. 




Silver three forked tails of lions sable. JOHN PYNCHEBEK. 
Gules a quarter sable and three silver lions' paws rased l over 

all. JOHN BROWNE. Lyncoll cbyre . 
Azure three cheverons silver. SIR TOMAS LEWGENORE. 

Sowsex cbyre. 
Silver a chief azure with a lion gules over all. SIR WYLYAM 

SENTGORGE. Cambryge cbyre. 
Green a cheveron gules between three harts' heads gold with 

three pierced molets gold 8 on the cheveron. TOMAS 

HEWGEFORD. Warrewyk cbyre. 
Azure a gimel bar gold 3 with a leopard gold in the chief. 

SIR JOHN TRAYGOSE. Sowsex. 
Gold three eagles' legs [ ] and a chief indented azure 

with three roundels silver. 

* A note to the trick says that the paws should be recoppyd and not rased. 
1 The colours of the molets and the cheveron have probably been ex- 



changed in error. 



3 Should be two gimel bars. 



202 



THE ANCESTOR 



Silver a fleur de lys gules. The armys of FLORENCE. 

Sable a man's foot of silver cut off at the ancle. TOMAS 

SHURLEY [a later hand adds SHRIGLEY] [Lancaster cbyre 

struck out]. Cheshire. 1 

Silver a cross of four ermine tails. [HuRLESTON. 1 Cheshire. 1 '] 
Azure three hares, their heads meeting in the midst, and 

having one ear apiece so disposed that each hare seems to 

have two ears. [HAREWELLE/] 
Checkered silver and sable ermined countercoloured with a 

cheveron gold. JOHN SOURBY. 







Silver a saltire sable with five silver swans. WYLYAM BOROWE. 
Party gold and gules with a lozenge countercoloured. 
Azure a chief gules with a griffon gold over all. WARREWYK. 
le herrawde. 




Sable ermined with silver. 

Silver with drops of sable. 2 [ROYDEN HALL."] 
Gules a bend silver with three rye erys of sabyll thereon. JOHN 
RYE. [Derbeshire. 1 ] 

1 In a later hand. 

3 A later hand had scrawled upon this shield a very narrow waved chief 
of gules. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 203 




Azure a cheveron gold between three golden pears. RYCHARD 

STEWKLEY. 
Ermine two running hounds with collars, looking backward, 

party gules and sable. 

Sable three wolves silver. TOMAS PALMER. 
The armys of LONDON beryth gowlys iiij woyderys 1 of syher a 

swerde of the felde. 
The army s of YORK.E beryth gowlys iiij lebarays of gold passant an 

crosse w' iiij woyderys of sylver. 
The armys of HWLL beryth of assewre iij ciownys of gold une 

deseus lautyr. 

Ermine a cinqfoil gules. The armys of LEYCESTER. 
Azure a cheveron gold with three escallops gules and a chief 

gules with a lion passant silver. 

Ermyne a cinqfoil ermyne? The armys of NOTYNGHAM. 
Party gules and silver with a dance countercoloured. [ ] 

SOWSEX. 
Party gules and sable a lion silver with a golden crown. 

[BlLLERS. 3 ] 

Silver three dolphins sable. SYMEON. Leicester cbyre. 

1 The influence of the early heraldry books will be seen in this curious . 
attempt to describe the London cross of St. George by avoiding the straight- 
forward and obvious method. 

3 It will be noted that here as elsewhere the same word is used for each 
of these furs. The ermyne of the cinqfoil is drawn as sable ermined with 
silver. 

* In a later hand. 



204 



THE ANCESTOR 




Party gold and sable a griffon passant gules. ROY DE EGYPTE. 

Azure three arms harnessed in silver armour joined at the 
shoulder and brandishing silver swords [OWEN AP EDWYN 
Prince of INGELFEILDE mistaken for the be 3 bosen con- 
joyned l ~\. Out of its place in the page we find this blazon : 
A beryib iij army 3 barney syd w' iij swerdys combattant joynand 
sayland* asewre and sylwyr. 

ENGLAND dimidiated with azure three hulls of gold. The 
armys of the v portys. 




Azure a lion gold and over it a fesse of gules with three fleurs 

de lys silver. ROY DE FRESLANDE. 
A shield of the MORTIMER fashion in sable and gold, the 

escutcheon being of gules with two bars ermine. [BURGHE. 

K. OF THE GARTER. 1 ] 

Silver two eagles' feet of gold the feathers of each rising up- 
ward as an eagle's wing of sable. 

1 In a later hand. 

8 Say land is a good word which suggests that we may conveniently blazon 
such shields as that of the Kingdom of Man as three arras joined in millsail 
fashion. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 205 




Azure bezanty with a lion gold. 

Silver a broken cheveron sable (for whose form see the shield 

above) between three pomelled crosslets fitchy. 1 SIR 

TOMAS FYNDARNE. 
Azure six roundels silver and a chief gold with a demi-lion 

gules. [GREENE. 2 ] 




Party gold and azure cheveronwise engrailed with an eagle sable 

in the chief. 
Sable three bearded heads of silver with crowns of gold. SIR 

TOMAS JAYE. 
Party azure and gold cheveronwise with six golden crosses 

paty in the chief. SIR JOHN WYLSCHYRE. 

1 A note below says tbys ys the trew armys as hyt sckulde be u/ the iij. . . . 
a In a later hand. 



2O6 



THE ANCESTOR 




Nine pieces sable and silver with four martlets sable. 

Party azure and gold cheveronwise and battled with two 

martlets gold in the chief. PYERSSE BERCHYER. 
Party sable and silver cheveronwise with three crescent 

countercoloured. To MAS WASTNASSE. 




Party gules and green with two griffons silver facing each 

other. EDMOND AP MERYTH. 
Party sable and silver cheveronwise with three bascinets or steel 

caps countercoloured. 
Gules a cheveron ermine between three portcullises ot gold. 

CLEMENT FYSCHCOK. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 207 




Quarterly silver and azure with a cheveron countercoloured. 

[CHAMBERLAYNE. 1 ] 

Party sable and ermine cheveronwise engrailed. JOHN 
LOVENEY. 

Azure a bend sable and in the upper cantel three boys' heads 
cut off at the neck of silver with golden hair having each 
a snake about the neck, and in the lower cantel three 
golden griffons' heads rased. TOMAS MADDOK. 




Party saltirewise ermine and checkered gold and gules. 

WYLYAM BEDWELL. 

Azure three winnowing fanys of gold. SEVAUNTE. 
Party silver and sable with a fleur de lys countercoloured 

coming out of a golden leopard's head. WATYR WHYTE- 



HELK. 



1 In a later hand. 



208 



THE ANCESTOR 




Azure three demi-horses silver running one under the other. 
[For this curious shield no blazon need be attempted. The 

field is sable and the charge silver. No name is added 

and the shield is probably foreign.] 
Party gold and gules a lion passant silver. SIR RYCHARD 

PLEYS. 




Gules three battled arches with towers of silver on either side. 

SIR JOHN ARCHYS. 
Party sable and silver cheveronwise with three griffons' heads 

countercoloured each charged with a crescent silver [but 

probably countercoloured also]. TOMAS LYNDE. 
Azure three silver perches athwart the shield in the manner 

of bars, each with a silver falcon sitting on it. JOHN 

FAWKENER. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 209 




Sable a cross engrailed silver between four crescents each party 
gules and silver. [BARNHAM.'] 

Silver three cheverons gules battled on both sides and re- 
versed. 

Party silver and sable cheveronwise with three drops counter- 
coloured. 




Party sable and gules, with drops of gold, a cross paty fitchy 

silver. MATHEWE REED. 
Quarterly ermine and sable with a leopard quarterly sable and 

silver. 
Green three hands of silver coming out of flames of fire 

gules. [KlLMAYNE.M 

Party silver and sable a fesse with three trefoils in the chief 

all countercoloured. JOHN MYCHELL. 
Gules a lion checkered sable and ermine with a golden crown. 

JOHN DENDUN. 
Party sable and ermine cheveronwise with two pierced molets 

silver in the chief. JOHN SELBY. 
Party green and azure indented with three silver trefoils. 

[VlNCENT. 1 ] 

1 In a later hand. 



210 THE ANCESTOR 

Sable a fesse silver battled on both sides between three leo- 
pards' heads gold. GYLYS BRABAN. 

Gules three silver charges fashioned like piles with a chief 
party ermine and azure indented. ROBARD OF SETON. 

Party gules and gold cheveronwise with two cinqfoils gold in 
the chief. 

Silver a fesse gules between three moorcocks (?) sable with 
three pierced molets sable on the fesse. WYLYAM 

LOWENEY. 

Sable three shields of silver. JOHN MORRSBE. 

Gold three Danish axes sable. ROY DE NORWAYE. 

Silver three boars' heads sable cut off at the neck. TOMAS 

OWYRTON. 

Azure a lion silver, the field flowered with silver. [JOHN 

MARCHALL. POLE.'] 
Party gold and green with a millrind cross gules. SIR ALEYNE 

DE HYNGHAM. 

Azure a sun gold. JOHN SENK.LERE. 
Gules a dance and six crosslets of silver. TOMAS LONGE- 

WYLE. 
Sable a fesse silver between three fleurs de lys silver with three 

pierced molets sable on the fesse. WYLYAM KYRYELL. 
Gules three battled bars silver. RYCHARD WHYTHORSSE. 
Gold two bends azure and a chief azure with two martlets 

gold. JOHN BROMEHYLL. 

Party silver and gules cheveronwise with a cheveron counter- 
coloured. TOMAS FYSELYS. 
Party azure and gules with three lions silver. RICHARD 

ESTENE. 
Party gules and silver cheveronwise with a fleur de lys sable in 

the foot. 
Silver with drops of sable and a chief azure with three golden 

crowns. JOHN KYNGTON. 
Sable three spoons of gold. JOHN SPONELEY. 
[ ] a cheveron gules between three scythe blades sable. 

STOPPYNGTON. 
Barry silver and gules of six pieces a chief gold with a lion 

passant sable. ROBARD INGYRFFELD. 
Ermine three saltires gules. 
Gold two corbies sable. TOMAS CORBETT. 

1 Both names struck out. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 211 




Gules three boys' heads cut off at the neck of silver with 
golden hair, having each a snake azure coiled about the 
neck. [VAUGHAN.*] 

Silver a lion gules with two heads. [MASSON.'] 
Sable a kettlehat of silver between three dice silver each with 
the point of four. JOHN SOWYS. 




Party azure and silver cheveronwise with three ostriches 

countercoloured. ROBARD OF KYRTON. 
Ermine a fleur de lys sable ermined with silver. JOHN 

COMYNE. 

Green three harts silver. TOMAS TROLLOPPE. 

1 In a later hand. 



212 



THE ANCESTOR 




Azure three lions party half syhyr and gowfys. 1 BART HO LO- 

MEWE TOMASYNE. 

Silver iij here fete sabyll in the manner of a mill sail. 

Sable a pile silver. RYCHARDE DYXTON. 

Gold three bolys * sable. JOHN BYLLYNGEDON. 

Gules two dances silver with three golden cups in the chief. 

WYLYAM LAGGAGE. 
Party silver and sable with a saltire engrailed countercoloured. 

TOMAS TYLE. 

Gold a saltire azure and gules vairy. ROBARD HYLLE. 
Green three arms with silver sleeves in the manner of a mill 

sail, the hands brandishing golden mallets, and in the 

midst a leopard's head gold. 
Ermine a chief gules with three silver hands. JOHN MALE- 

MAYNE. 

Silver a pale azure with three eagles gold. 

Gules a fesse vairy of sable and silver between three boars 

heads sable. JOHN LARDENER. 
Silver a cross sable with five Catherine wheels silver. JOHN 

BRECHE. 
Gold a lion sable with drops of gold. SIR JOHN BROM- 

WYCH. 
Silver a cheveron between three spades sable. RYCHARD 

STAN DELL. 
Azure a dance silver between three crowns gules. TOMAS 

GERVEYS. 



1 It will be seen that the parting line follows the line of the heads and 
backs of the lions and parts the tail also. 

* Three long boots are shown in the trick. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 213 

Silver a cheveron gules between three fleurs de lys l sable. 

JOHN THORNEWE. 
Azure a cross checkered gold and gules. SIR ROBARD 

WYNTTYR [WHITTNEY*]. 
Sable a chief silver and three drops countercoloured. TOMAS 

CROSBY. 
Party ermine and sable with a cheveron countercoloured. 

TOMAS BLUNDELL. 

Gules a wyvern or dragon silver. 8 SIR ROBARD TRENTTE. 
Sable three rakes gold. JOHN BROMLEY [or TROMLEY]. 
Party gold and gules a lion sable. JOHN PYRLEY. 
Sable a cross gules between four maidens' heads silver cut off 

at the neck. SIR RICHARD KNYGHT. 
Gyronny silver and sable (of eight pieces) and a quarter gules 

with a cup of silver. JOHN STRETLEY. 
Silver two bars green with nine green martlets three, three 

and three. RYCHARD AYLEWARD. 
Sable a cheveron between three pheons silver with three 

pierced molets gold on the cheveron. JOHN NEWPORT. 
Silver a cheveron indented sable between three pineapples 

gold. TOMAS XPYRSTOFFYR. 

Sable a pale gules with three martlets silver. JOHN SELOWE. 
Silver a Saracen's head gules with a torse about the temples 

and a chief party gold and azure. JOHN SELBY. 
Azure two dances sable. JOHN METFORD. 
Azure with drops of gules a lion silver. SIR TOMAS BREWNE. 
Silver a bend gules with three harpies silver. WYLYAM 

ENTYRDENE. 

Gules a lion vair. SIR JOHN EWERYNGHAM. 
Silver a lion sable billety gold. SIR ROGER DE ASKEBY. 
Silver a cheveron sable between three (beaver's feet ?) cut off 

sable with a golden T on the cheveron. WYLYAM 

BEWER. 

Party azure and gules a lion ermine. SIR JOHN NORWYCH. 
Sable a cheveron gules with golden drops between three cinq- 
foils ermine. TOMAS WOODHOWSE. 
Silver a lion azure with drops of gold. SIR JOHN HAULOW. 

1 The fleurs de lys are drawn with long and wavy tails. 
3 In a later hand. 

3 Called a dragon in the margin. The distinction between dragons and 
wyverns comes somewhat late in the history of blazon. 



214 



THE ANCESTOR 



Green a bend gules between six bulls' heads silver. 
Gules bezanty with a lion silver. SIR NYCOLL HEWYK. 
Sable three silver lions passant bendwise between two cotises 

engrailed silver. NYCOLAS GARNET. 
Silver billety gules with a lion gules. SIR TOMAS TWRBYR- 



WYLE. 



Gules a chief azure, with a lion gold passant in the gules his 
forked tail spreading into the chief. SIR ROBARD HAS- 



TYNGE. 



Silver a lion purple powdered with voided lozenges of gold. 

SIR TOMAS HERTFORDE. 

Gold a lion azure fretted with gold. SIR ROBARD BOXHYLL. 
Burelly silver and azure with three lions gules. SIR RAUF 

STODEBYNT. 
Gules two lions passant silver within a double tressure flowered 

and counterflowered silver. SIR WYLYAM FELTON. 
Sable a lion silver with drops of silver. SIR JOHN NEWYLE. 




Gules three bends vair. [BRAY. 1 ] 

Silver three posnets of gules and a sable border bezanty. SIR 

BARTRAM DE MONBUCHER. 
Azure six arrows gold. [ARCHER. 1 ] 

1 In a later hand. 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY ARMS 215 




Azure crusilly fitchy gold with three crescents gold. SIR 

RAWFE SANZAVIR. 

Silver a pair of wings gules. SIR TOMAS FYTZ PAYNE. 
Gules billety gold. EDWARD COWDREY. 




Party sable and silver bendwise and battled. TOMAS KOULAY. 
Gules a cheveron silver between three silver tilting helms. 

JOHN HYHAM. 
Gold six fleurs de lys sable. TOMAS COSTANTYNE. 

(To be concluded.'} 



2i 6 THE ANCESTOR 



ON SOME FORGOTTEN SWYNNERTONS 
OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 

I. 'JOHN DE SWYNNERTON' 

IN 19 Edw. III. 1346, a 'John de Swynnerton ' was serving 
in the army in France. Among the Army Miscellanea of 
the Exchequer for that year there is an account of the wages 
of the men-at-arms and others in the retinue of Lord James 
de Audley of Helegh Castle, co. Stafford, with Henry de 
Lancaster, the son of the Earl of Lancaster, in Gascony and 
Guienne. The account is for 197 days, from 26 April, when 
they started from the castle of Helegh (situated four or five 
miles from Whitmore) until the last day of November follow- 
ing, each knight receiving 2s. per diem^ each squire is. and each 
mounted archer 6d. In the list of squires occurs the name of 
* John de Swynnerton,' and among his companions we find 
such well-known Whitmore and Newcastle names as ' William 
de Thiknes,' ' John de Hinkele,' ' John de Whitemore,' 
'Thomas de Whitemore,' 'John de Podmore,' ' Robert de But- 
ton ' of Maer near Whitmore, etc. 1 

John de Swynnerton reappears in 26 Edw. III. 1352, when 
the king made him a grant of two parts (a moiety in short) of 
the manor of Sellyng, which had belonged to Henry fitz Roger, 
deceased, to hold until the full age of the heir. 1 

He is probably also the second John de Swynnerton 
mentioned in the following 

By writ tested at Westminster, 4 August, 33 Edw. III. 
1359, John de Swynnerton (as commissioner of array), John 
de Stafford, and the sheriff of Staffordshire, are ordered to 
deliver to John de Swynnerton forty archers mounted, chosen 
from the county of Stafford, to be by him conducted to Sand- 
wich on the Quinzaine of the Assumption of the B.V.M. 
next ensuing at latest, ready to serve in the king's retinue at 
the king's expense. 3 

The first John de Swynnerton here noted was John de 
Swynnerton of Hilton, who was employed at home as escheator 

1 Staff. Coll. viii. 25. * Ab. Rot. Orig. ii. 222. 

3 Rym. Teed. tit. pt. I, 416. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 217 

or sheriff or commissioner of array during the whole of 
Edward's wars, and who saw little or no foreign service. The 
other John was evidently then in the retinue of the king. 

John de Swynnerton died some time before Michaelmas, 
1362, as the extract following shows Michaelmas, 36 Edw. 
III. London. Joan, formerly wife of John de Swynnerton, 
and John Swyft, Chaplain, executors of the will of John de 
Swynnerton, sued Richard de Lichefeld for a debt of 40. 
And again In 36 Edw. III. 1362, the king gave to Joan who 
had been the wife of John de Swynnerton, deceased, the 
custody of the moiety of the manor of Sellyng, with the 
appurtenances, which had belonged to Henry fitzRoger, 
deceased, to hold until the full age of the heir. 1 

It is not at all easy to fix this John de Swynnerton or to 
find him a place in the pedigree. The pedigree appended to 
this article will show that the father must have borne the name 
of Roger, and the following considerations render it probable, 
though by no means certain, that he was Sir Roger de Swyn- 
nerton, knight of Swynnerton. 

The two Subsidy Rolls of 1327 and 1333 reveal the strik- 
ing fact, that all those persons bearing the name c Swynnerton ' 
at that time in co. Stafford were near kinsmen of Roger, lord 
of Swynnerton, for though a full list is given of all the tenants, 
parish by parish, who were assessed, not a single Swynnerton 
appears among them. The explanation is (as General Wrottes- 
ley has pointed out to me) that Roger de Swynnerton was so 
constantly engaged in personal attendance on the king, in 
peace and war, and was held in so great esteem by him, that 
the privilege which exempted him from payment exempted 
also the whole of his Swynnerton kinsmen. 2 

The following references out of many will serve to show 
the position filled by himself and his sons at court. 

By Edward II. he was made successively governor of 
Harlech Castle in Wales, 3 governor of Eccleshall Castle during 
a vacancy in the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield/ and 
constable of the Tower of London, in which capacity he pro- 
duced the Mortimers, then in his custody, before the judges 
at Westminster and in the Tower, on the Monday and Tues- 
day next after the Feast of St. Peter ad Vincula, 2 and 3 
August, 1322.' 

1 Ab. Rot. Orig. ii. 270. * Staff Coll. vii. pt. I, x. pt. I. 

Rot. Orig. 14 Edw. III. roll 9 (ii. 255). * Parltamevtan Writt. * Ibid. 



218 THE ANCESTOR 

By the same king, on 2 November, n Edw. II. 1317, Sir 
Roger de Swynnerton was made governor of the king's town of 
Stafford, to hold during the king's pleasure, 1 and on 3 Novem- 
ber the king committed to him the superior custody of the 
peace in co. Stafford to do and to exercise those things which 
should tend to the fullest preservation of the same peace, as 
well for the king's honour and advantage as for the tranquillity 
of the people of those parts. 2 For some time the county was 
really under martial law, Roger de Swynnerton, then the most 
powerful man in Staffordshire,exercising almost unlimited control. 

He was also on special service on the person of Queen 
Isabel. On 18 February, i Edw. III. 1327, Roger Mortimer 
and Isabel being then in the plenitude of their power, letters 
patent announced that the king (Edw. III.) had, on 1 1 February 
last, granted to Roger de Swynnerton the manors, lands, 
etc., of Hugh le Despencer in the counties of Stafford and 
Chester to support his dignity, taking into consideration the 
good and commendable service which the said Roger has done 
for Isabel, Queen of England, the king's mother, and for 
the king, etc. 3 

This grant (really a confirmation) must have been the act 
of Isabel herself. Roger de Swynnerton and William Trussell, 
who as proctor of the estates of the Realm had pronounced 
to the unfortunate Edward II. his deposition in Kenilworth 
Castle, were both in attendance on the royal party as followers 
of Henry of Lancaster, whose honours had not yet been 
restored, and who was at the head of the queen's or revolu- 
tionary party. In like manner also the following : 

In 2 Edw. III. 1328-9 Whereas the king is bound to 
Roger de Swynnerton in the sum of 24 165. for the charges 
and cost expended by the same Roger in the king's service 
from Marlebergh unto Sarum and from thence unto Walyn- 
ford the king has assigned him the aforesaid 24 i6s. to be 
taken from the issues of the county of Stafford by the hands 
of the sheriff for the time being dated at Coventry, 2 January. 
And by writ of Privy Seal the sheriff is charged to dis- 
burse, and to have due allowance made for the same at the 
king's exchequer. 4 

1 Patent Rolls u Edw. II. m. 17. * Ibid. 

3 Rot. Orig. i. 301 ; Rot. Fin. I Edw. III. m. 27 ; Letters Patent, I Edw. 
III. m. 19. 

4 Patent Rolls z Edw. III. pt. z, m. 3. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 219 

In the same year, being then a banneret, Sir Roger de 
Swynnerton had an assignation out of the exchequer of 
145 13*. 8</., as well for his wages of war in that expedition 
made into Scotland in i Edw. III., as for his services in attend- 
ance on Queen Isabel in 20 Edw. II. 1 

Again, in 4 Edw. III. 1330, the king of his special grace 
remits and pardons to his beloved and faithful Roger de 
Swynnerton all kinds of accompts by him due to the king, as 
well for the time during which he had the custody or the 
Tower of London, as for the time he had the bailiwick of the 
Hundred of Totemandeslowe in co. Stafford, and the custody 
of the castle and manor of Eccleshall during the voidance of 
the bishopric of Chester, by commission of the Lord Edward, 
late King of England, the king's father. Also all the arrears 
due by reason of the said accompts, if any, and also the 
amercements which have befallen the said Roger, and the issues 
of his forfeiture, because he hath not rendered the accompts 
aforesaid until now. And the king acquits him thereof by the 
tenor of these presents. The king is moreover unwilling that 
the same Roger, by reason of the premisses, shall be hindered 
or in any way molested or aggrieved by the king, his heirs or 
ministers whatsoever. Dated at Woodstock, 6 May. By 
writ of Privy Seal. 1 

Again, in 6 Edw. III. he had a grant of the manor of 
Shotewyk in part satisfaction of a grant of 300 voted to him 
by the king in council for his good services. 3 

A few extracts from the exchequer accounts and the Pell 
Issues, kindly supplied to me by General Wrottesley, will still 
further illustrate the position of the Swynnertons at this 
time. 

Accounts of 8 and 9 Edw. III. Paid to Roger de Swynner- 
ton, banneret, for his robes (of livery as being of the king's 
household) 16 marks. And to Thomas de Swynnerton (his 
second surviving son), ' scutifer ' of the king's chamber, also for 
his robes 4 marks.* 

Roger died in 1338, just after his elevation to the rank of 

1 Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 1 1 *. 
* Patent Rolls 4 Edw. III. m. zz. 

3 Ibid. 6 Edw. III. m. 4. He was also one of the twenty-five English 
magnates to the king's treat)- with Patrick of Dunbar, Earl of March, touching 
the surrender of Berwick (Rymer's Fadera). 

4 Exchequer Accounts, *-i. 



220 THE ANCESTOR 

baron, and in the same year grants are made to Thomas de 
Swynnerton, knight of the kings chamber, and to Humphrey de 
Swynnerton (a younger son), ' scutifer ' of the king's chamber, 
for winter and summer robes. 1 

At Easter 12 Edw. III. the same year, Thomas de Swynner- 
ton, knight of the king's household, receives 200 as wages of 
war. 2 Also, on 24 June, 14 Edw. III. 1340, Thomas de 
Swynnerton was with the king in the action off Sluys, and 
immediately after at the siege of Tournay. 3 He and his 
brother Humphrey were in the king's train at Crecy, and 
received for their wages of war, the former 31 175., and the 
latter 6 85. 6d., and again in 33-4 Edw. III. 1359-60, as a 
knight of the king, from the exchequer, for his robes, he had 
1065. 8</. 4 

The following entry also bears upon the subject, and is 
besides curious : In 27 Edw. III. 1353, to Sir Thomas de 
Swynnerton of the gift of the king, by way of fee, of the 
cost of one cloth of gold-worked ' rakemat ' placed over the 
head of the king on Christmas Day in the 27th year (of the 
reign) 1005. Thomas de Swynnerton was, in fact, as Canon 
Bridgeman observes, the chamberlain of the king's court. 5 

Lastly, we have the evidence of Sir Thomas de Swynner- 
ton's marriage, for his wife was Maud, a sister of Thomas 
Holand, Earl of Kent, and Thomas Holand had married Joan, 
the ' fair maid of Kent,' grand-daughter of Edward I. who, on 
Thomas Holand's death, was married to Edward the Black 
Prince, and by him became the mother of Richard II. 8 Dug- 
dale mentions that in his time the tomb of Maud de Swynner- 
ton still existed in Swynnerton Church, with a shield of the 
Holands, and the inscription ' Matilda de Swynnerton.' 

The following extract will show that Thomas de Swynner- 
ton had five esquires and six mounted archers of his own 
retinue : To Thomas de Swynnerton kt. and five esquires 
and six archers of his retinue, for their wages of war, 
October, 33 Edw. III. to May, 34 Edw. III. (when the peace 
of Bretigny was signed). 7 

It would be rash to assert that John de Swynnerton whose 
case we are considering was one of these five squires ; but it is 

1 Exchequer Accounts,^. 2 Ibid. ^f- 8 . 

3 Staff. Coll. viii. 

4 Exchequer Accounts, 3 -ff and 3 T 9 T 3 - 5 Ibid - W- 

6 Heralds' Visitations. * Exchequer Accounts, 9 T 3 T S . 



THE SWYNNERTONS 221 

curious that he and Thomas de Swynnerton died about the 
same time, the latter apparently in France. 

At Easter, 36 Edw. III. 1362, to the executors of Thomas 
de Swynnerton in part payment of his wages of war, his 
reward, and for the re-passage of his horses 66 13.*. 4^.' 

According to Canon Bridgeman, Thomas de Swynnerton 
died in December, 1361, and as we have seen John must have 
died in the spring or summer of 1362, perhaps earlier. What 
did they die of ? Not in war, because there was then peace. 
The second visitation of the plague broke out in August, 
1361, and raged till May, 1362. Robert de Swynnerton, 
lord of Swynnerton, died in the first visitation of 1 349, and 
it is more than likely that both Thomas and John perished in 
the second. That John de Swynnerton died on service is 
certain, because, as we have seen, the king continued his grant 
of Sellyng to his widow Joan. 

Enough however has been quoted to show the position 
held by the Swynnertons in the time of Edward II. and III., 
and to explain the reason of the exemption of all of that name 
from the subsidies levied in those two reigns. 

It is certain then that John de Swynnerton was nearly re- 
lated to Sir Roger de Swynnerton. It will not be so easy to 
discover the degree of that relationship, though we may do so 
approximately. 

We may take it for granted that John de Swynnerton, the 
squire of 1345, was not of an earlier generation than Sir 
Roger de Swynnerton himself. That was the generation 
which saw personal names pass from the fluid and fluctuating 
state engendered by manifold manorial possession to become 
fixed and regular surnames. No longer merely local or resi- 
dential, no longer fluctuating designations, they became con- 
stant quantities unchanging patronymics in the sense of 
being generic. Thus in the generation preceding names are 
still in confusion, without any method or order, and, as ex- 
amples, Stephen de Isewall, Nicolas de Aspley, John de 
Sugnall, Richard de Peshall, Richard de Chell, are all really 
Swynnertons. Even so late as 1336 John de Swynnerton of 
Isewall appears in the records as John ' de Isewelle,' or ' de 
Iselewelle,' or ' de Uselwall.' Speaking generally however the 
change set in with the reign of Edward II. The capital 

1 Pelllsiuei. 



222 THE ANCESTOR 

manor gave the fixed surname to the various scattered mem- 
bers of the family not already differentiated whatever their 
holdings might be ; and so, whereas Roger de Swynnerton's 
uncle is oftener called ' de Uselwall ' than ' de Swynnerton,' 
his brothers are always { de Swynnerton.' ' John de Swynner- 
ton's' place therefore will be found in the generation of Roger 
de Swynnerton, or in the generation of. Roger de Swynnerton's 
sons. Let us examine both. 

Roger de Swynnerton's brothers were : 

1. Sir John de Swynnerton of Hilton, kt., who died in 

1340, and could not possibly have been the John 
whose origin we are now considering. 

2. Richard de Swynnerton, a man-at-arms in the retinue 

of Roger de Somery at Crecy and Calais, who was 
living in 1350. 

3. Nicolas de Swynnerton, a priest. 

4. Stephen de Swynnerton, to whom the king gave the 

manor of Morton in co. Dumfries, and who seems 
then to have left Staffordshire. 

5. Another John who was a monk of Westminster. 1 

Of the same generation as Roger de Swynnerton was his 
first cousin, John de Swynnerton of Isewall, but he died in 
1337. The other Swynnertons of that generation appear to 
have been distinguished by purely local names. 

We now come to the next generation. The line of John 
de Swynnerton of Isewall may be 'passed over, as, from the 
fact of his paternal inheritance going to Sir Roger de Swyn- 
nerton at his death in 1337, he would appear to have left no 
issue. John de Swynnerton of Hilton had a son John, but 
he accompanied the king to Flanders in 1345, at the very 
time the other John de Swynnerton was with James de Audley 
in Gascony, and besides his death occurred in 1380, not in 
1362. Richard de Swynnerton had a son 'Thomas son of 
Richard de Swynnerton,' to whom he transferred all his pro- 
perty in Chorlton and Whitmore, and who sold or bequeathed 
it to Thomas son of Elias del Wode and Elianor his wife, 
daughter of Richard de Hatton, in 1368, but there is no evi- 

1 Bridgeman gives also an ' Alexander de Swynnerton.' There was no 
Alexander de Swynnerton. He was merely the bailiff ' de Swynnerton ' 
(Ancient Petitions, No. 7,812, Record Office). 



THE SWYNNERTONS 223 

dence that Richard had other sons. If Stephen de Swynnerton 
had sons they are not recorded. 1 

We are thus reduced to the male issue of Sir Roger de 
Swynnerton himself, and his sons as at present known were 

1. Sir Roger de Swynnerton, eldest son, kt., who died 

v.p. and s.p. 

2. Robert de Swynnerton, a priest, lord of Swynnerton, 

who died of the plague in 1349. 

3. Sir Thomas de Swynnerton, kt., lord of Swynnerton, 

who died in (December) 1361, probably also of the 
plague. 

4. Richard de Swynnerton, a priest. 

5. Humphrey de Swynnerton of Isewall, squire of the 

chamber to Edward III., ancestor of the later 
Swynnertons of Isewall.* 

Now in this list what strikes us most is the absence ot any 
John. For (i) the original founder of the house was a John ; 
(2) Roger's great-uncle who conferred Swynnerton on his 
father was a John Sir John de Swynnerton, kt., who died in 
1284 ; (3) his uncle of Isewall, and his father's companion in 
arms on many a hard-fought field, was also a John ; and (4) 
his next younger brother of Hilton, the seneschal of Cannock 
Forest and the king's deputy warden of the forests this side 
Trent, was also named John. Evidently then in the list of 
Sir Roger's sons there is a John missing. In my opinion the 
missing John is found in c John de Swynnerton,' who went 
with James de Audley to Gascony in 1345, on whom the king 
conferred for a term of years the manor of Sellyng for his 
good services, and who died, apparently of the plague, early 
in 1362, leaving a widow, Joan, to whom the king's grant was 
confirmed. He was evidently an enterprising character like 
Sir Roger himself, and the evidence of the Army Miscellanea 
f J 345 proves that his holding was under the Earl of 
Lancaster, close to Swynnerton, somewhere in the Liberty of 
Newcastle, apparently at Butterton, certainly in the demesne 
of Whitmore, which was part of the manor of Knutton, which 
was a member of the earl's Liberty of Newcastle-under-Lyme. 

That the Audleys were mesne lords of the manor of 
Knutton, of which Wbitmore was only a member? may be seen 

1 Staff. Coll. vii. pt I. a Ibid. 

3 I have an original deed, circa 1225, in which John son of Ralph de 



224 THE ANCESTOR 

in the suit of King Edward I. against Thomas le Forester for 
four bovates of land in Knutton, and against John de Knutton, 
for three bovates of land in the same vill. The defendants 
called to warranty William Russel, who appeared and war- 
ranted the tenements to them ; and William Russel called 
NICHOLAS DE ALDYTHELEGH (Audley), then head of the house, 
to warranty for all the land claimed by the king (which was 
in fact the whole manor), and Nicholas warranted it to him, 
and appealed to a Great Assize, which found in his favour. 1 

But besides all this the Audleys had long before obtained 
a grant of rents of Assize in the Liberty of Newcastle, which 
made them the virtual landlords of the local tenants of the 
duchy. 2 

There remains one more point of singular interest bearing 
on the problem of the identity of this John de Swynnerton. 

It was a custom in the palmy days of armory for great 
captains to confer on their most distinguished followers the 
right of bearing some modification of their own arms, an 
honour which would correspond with the V.C. or the K.C.B. 
of modern times. In accordance with this custom, James de 
Audley is said to have conferred on the four Staffordshire 
squires whom he is said to have selected to stand by him 
throughout the battle of Poictiers, an augmentation of gules 
fretty gold, then the distinguishing arms of the house of 
Audley. According to Ashmole, their names were Button of 
Button, Belves of Boddington, Fowleshurst of Crewe and 
Hawkestone of Wrinehill ; but there is reason for supposing 
that Ashmole is only approximately right, for Button and 
Belves, to begin with, were Staffordshire men of Maer and 
Whitmore respectively. Be that as it may, Froissart particu- 
larly refers to these men, but unfortunately he neither gives 
their names nor mentions the grant of arms. A precisely simi- 
lar grant however must have been made to another squire of 
James Audley, to a member of the family of Swynnerton, 
and the heraldic evidence is so striking that it is difficult to 
resist the conclusion that all five grants were made, if not at 
the same time, at any rate by the same leader, and during the 
progress of the same war. Any one who will compare the 

Cnotton confirms to Ralph son of John de Wytemore lands in Whitmore 
granted by his father to John de Wytemore's father. 

1 >uo Warranto Pleas, 31 Edw. I. 1292. 

a Inquisitions, temp. Hen. III. Stafford Library. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 225 

various coats of these five squires with each other, and then 
with the arms of the Audleys themselves, will understand how 
strong, not to say irresistible, the evidence is. I therefore 
give here the whole six coats, beginning with that of James de 
Audley himself: 

1. AUDLEY. Gules fretty gold. 

2. FOULESHURST. Gules fretty gold with a chief ermine. 

3. SWYNNERTON. Ermine a chief gules fretty gold. 

4. HAWKESTONE. Ermine a fesse gules fretty gold. 

5. BUTTON. Quarterly silver and gules, the gules fretty gold. 

6. DELVES. Silver a cheveron gules fretty gold between three delves 

sable. 

A glance at these various coats suggests a very obvious in- 
ference, which is that, while the four squires immortalized by 
Froissart, whichever of these they were, acted as James de 
Audley's bodyguard at Poictiers, a fifth squire had so dis- 
tinguished himself, there or elsewhere, as to merit a similar 
mark of honour. All bear the golden fret, and all display the 
fret on a red field. Especially significant are the coats of 
Fouleshurst and Swynnerton, which are exactly alike, except- 
ing that their respective colours are marshalled in reverse 
order, the former bearing the fret or in base and the latter in 
chief, and it seems to me that if a shield of gules fretty gold 
with a chief of ermine was conferred on Fouleshurst, then un- 
doubtedly a shield of ermine with a chief of gules, fretty gold, may 
well have been conferred on Swynnerton by the same hand, if 
not at the same time. 

But the evidence is by no means exhausted yet. 

When, after three years' truce, the war with France broke 
out again, it was signalized by the news of the sudden capture 
by the French of St. Jean d'Angely in Guienne. At once 
Edward III. despatched a force to re-take it and to relieve the 
threatened province. As one of the leaders of the first draft 
of 300 men-at-arms, Froissart particularly mentions James 
d'Audley. The draft however was so hurried off that no Let- 
ters of Protection for any of those composing it appear on the 
French or Gascon Rolls. Still it is on record that, on the 
arrival of the news, James Lord Audley, Ralph Lord Stafford 
and John de Sutton Lord Dudley of co. Stafford, forming 
part of the relieving force, with twelve other barons, received 
writs of urgency to hasten to Westminster, on the morrow 



226 THE ANCESTOR 

of the close of Easter, to advise the king respecting the safety 
and defence of the kingdom. Dated 20 March. 1 

At that time the seneschal of Gascony was Sir James de 
Pype, a Staffordshire knight and a half-brother of Ralph, Earl 
of Stafford. It is a curious coincidence that this same knight 
was at that very time a tenant, for the term of his life, of Sir 
Thomas de Swynnerton's estate of Isewall in the Liberty of 
Eccleshall, co. Stafford. 2 

It is evident, from the summonses of the following years, 
addressed to all who were to accompany the king in person, that 
the Guienne force remained in Gascony under the supreme 
command of Edward the Black Prince, until the close of the 
operations, after the decisive action of Poictiers (1356). It is 
certain too that James de Audley's retinue must have been as 
complete as the urgency of the time demanded, and that he 
was followed by as many of his Staffordshire squires as he had 
been able to muster together. I make no doubt John de 
Swynnerton, then in the prime of life, was one of them. I 
make no doubt indeed, on the testimony of armory alone, 
that he was one of the chosen few of that leader's select 
bodyguard. Among those famous men, on the evening of 
the battle, the hero of the day divided the ^500 in land con- 
ferred on him on the field by the Black Prince.* If Froissart 
gives the number as only four, and if Ashmole enumerates 
them by name, it is to be noted that Froissart wrote from 
hearsay, and that Ashmole's statement is probably based on 
the evidence of fable only. The question therefore still looks 
for an answer * Who were the squires and what their num- 
ber who fought shoulder to shoulder with James de Audley 
on the field of Poictiers ? ' 

It will thus be seen how the historical evidence available 
to date, and already adduced in the foregoing pages, is most 
curiously illustrated by the evidence of armory. The squire, 

1 Staff. Coll. viii. 92-3. 

2 See the original lease in the British Museum, dated 22 July, 1350. 
The old ' close,' with the moated site of the house, is now the property of 
the writer. 

3 ' These four squires have long and loyally served me on many great and 
dangerous occasions, and until the day that I made them this present, I had 
not any way rewarded them for all their services.' 

So, according to Froissart, spoke Lord James Audley to the Black Prince 
in explanation of his having transferred the gift to his squires. It shows that 
wherever he went his retinue followed him. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 227 

John de Swynnerton, died six years after the date of Poictiers. 
He may not have been present at that famous fight, but the 
probabilities are largely in his favour, since he had actually 
seen service with the same leader in the same provinces before. 
At any rate, though the particular roll which recorded the 
precise occasion may have perished, the golden fret on the 
field of blood still survives to tell of high achievement done 
somewhere in those famous French wars by that old Stafford- 
shire squire, whom the records forbid us to identify with any 
other than John de Swynnerton of Whitmore. From him 
the present writer lineally descends. 

I do not myself believe for a moment that Button 
of Dutton and Delves of Delves, both Cheshire men, were 
squires of the body of James de Audley at all. James de 
Audley was a thorough Staffordshire man, and John de Delves 
of Whitmore, co. Stafford, and Robert de Dutton of Maer, 
next parish to Whitmore, both also Staffordshire men and 
actual tenants of James de Audley, though cadets of the 
houses of Dutton of Dutton and Delves of Delves, are far 
more likely, I think, to have been the two squires bearing 
those names with claims to be numbered among the famous 
four. 

II. ROGER DE SWYNERTON ' 

If ' John de Swynnerton ' left sons they must have been 
minors when he died in 1362. 

Sir Robert de Swynnerton, kt., and a Roger de Swynner- 
ton were among those who had the king's letters of protec- 
tion for one year, dated 21 October, 48 Edw. III. (1374), to 
go to parts beyond sea, in the king's service, and in the 
company of John, Duke of Brittany and Earl of Richmond. 1 
Sir Robert was Sir Thomas Swynnerton's son and heir. Roger 
was perhaps his nephew. 

Among the evidences to be now quoted there will be some 
extracts from the court rolls of the manor of Newcastle-under- 
Lyme. These rolls however begin only very late in the reign 
or Edward III., and the gaps in them are very extensive. The 
paucity of references to the Swynnertons who were tenants in 
the manor for generations is so remarkable as to suggest a 
suspicion that many of the folios have been abstracted, either 

1 Staff. Coll. vii. pt. i, 42. 



228 THE ANCESTOR 

to establish supposed claims, or to get rid of evidences. Other- 
wise these rolls would have sufficed to establish the complete 
descent of all the Swynnerton tenants of the manor. The 
following important entry is a survival : 

PPhitmore, 3 Ric. II. (1379). On the Saturday next after 
the Feast of St. Martin, Roger de Swynarton sued Thomas de 
Sheprugg (Seabridge) in a plea of customs, and in a similar 
plea he sues also John de Sheprugg the son of Thomas. 
Thomas essoins his attendance by John de Whytechirche, 
chaplain, and John by Thomas de Clayton. 

St. Martin's Day is 4 July. We have already proved in 
The Earlier Swynnertons of Ecclesball that Butterton was of the 
demesne of Whitmore, and in the parish of Trentham. 1 A. 
concord, dated Newcastle, the Feast of the Annunciation of 
the B.V.M. 8 Edw. I. 1279, between Edmund, Earl of Lan- 
caster, King Henry's son, and Sir John de Swynnerton, kt., 
of the one part, and all the free tenants of Butterton of the 
other part, regarding common of pasture in Schertlyme (now 
Shutlane), gives us a complete list of the tenants then 
holding in Butterton, and among them, first on the list, comes 
the name of 'William de Scheperugg.' 2 There were no 
Swynnertons then at Butterton apparently. They purchased 
later. But the copy of court roll just cited shows that in 1379 
certain ' Shepruggs ' owed customs were tenants apparently 
to ' Roger de Swynarton.' 

Chetwynd, the Staffordshire antiquary of the seventeenth 
century, tells us that in 5 Ric. II. 1381-2 there was living a 
' Roger Swinnerton of Butterton,' and that a ' John Swinner- 
ton of Butterton ' occurs in 8 Ric. II. 13 84-5." Chetwynd 
is an acknowledged authority, but even his authority would be 
the better for exact citation. We may take it for granted 
however that when he made those statements, he did not do 
so without good reason. Roger and John were probably two 
brothers. Corroborative evidence will be given presently. 

To go back a little. 

In 7 Edw. II. 1313-4, Roger son of Roger de Swynner- 
ton, lord of Swynnerton, was acknowledged superior lord of 
the manor of Whitmore by Ralph son of John, lord of 

1 Staff. Coll. vol. xxi. 

8 There is an early copy of this deed among the Newcastle Manor Court 
Rolls. 

3 Chetwynd MSS. penes Earl of Shrewsbury. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 



229 




AUDLIY. Gultifrettj 
gold. 




M * * 




SWYNNIRTON. Ermine a 
chief gules frettj gold. 




DILVIS. Silver a cbeveron gulti 
fretted with gold between three 
delves of able. 




DUTTON. Quarterly silver 
and gules frtttj gold. 



* ** 





HAWICIITONE. Ermine a 
feat guleifretty gold. 




FOULUBOIIT. Guta frttty 
gold viitb t chief ermine. 



THE ARMS OF THE LORD AUDLEY AND OF THE STAFFORDSHIRE SQVIRES 
WHO ARE SAID TO HAVE BORNE THE AuDLEY FRET IN THEIR SHIELDS. 



230 THE ANCESTOR 

Whitmore, in return for which Roger de Swynnerton granted 
that manor to the said Ralph, to hold of him and his heirs 
for ever, the said Ralph and his successors rendering a 
white rose yearly, and performing the accustomed services to 
the capital lord. And if Ralph died without issue, the manor 
was to revert to Roger de Swynnerton and his heirs. 1 

From that date, Roger de Swynnerton was possessed of 
the homage and service of the old lords of Whitmore. 

In 1368 however we find some of those rights in 
possession of Roger Burgylon. In 43 Edw. III. 1369, there 
was a final concord between John de Delves, kt., plaintiff, 
and Roger Burgylon, deforciant, concerning 24*. rent in 
Whitmore. Roger Burgylon granted the said rents to John, 
together with the homage and service of John de Whitmore and 
his heirs for the tenements which the said John de Whitmore 
formerly held of Roger in the same vill. 2 

Thus certain seignorial rights in Whitmore had passed from 
Roger de Swynnerton (who died in 1338) to Roger Burgylon. 
The obvious inference is that Sir Roger de Swynnerton had 
granted those rights to Roger Burgylon in frank marriage with 
one of his daughters. If so, her name was Margery de 
Swynnerton, and she it is who figures as grantor in the follow- 
ing deed. 

Margery, widow of Roger Burgelon, gives Nicholas, prior 
of Trentham, and the canons, etc., for herself and her heirs, 
her rights (meaning rights of dower) in 13*. ^d. worth of land 
in Clayton Griffin, formerly her husband's (her son John, a 
priest, consenting). These witnesses, ROGER de SWYNERTON, 
John, lord of Whitmore, William de Theckenes, Thomas de 
Theckenes, Ralph del Hogh, and others. Given at Trentham 
on the Monday next after the Feast of the Purification of the 
B.V.M. 5 Ric. II. 1382.* 

Confirmation is found in the fact that, in the attesting 

1 Final Concord, No. 79. At Westminster. On the Octaves of Trinity. 
The original charter of Roger de Swynnerton, together with a contemporaneous 
court copy of the Final Concord, is in the psosession of the writer. 

2 Staff. Coll. xi. 177. 

3 Trentham Chartulary penes Duke of Sutherland. There is also a 
duplicate deed in which ' Roger de Swynerton's ' name is given as ' Roger de 
Swenarton.' Note. The Priors of Trentham held Clayton Griffin of the 
Burgylons (under the Earls of Lancaster) by fealty, and the service of one 
marc (i 3;. 4</.), for all service (Staff. Coll. ix. 46). 



THE SWYNNERTONS 231 

clause, Roger de Swynnerton, a cadet of the family of Swyn- 
nerton, takes precedence of John, lord of Whitmore, and of 
William de Thickness, the Duke of Lancaster's seneschal, 
taking rank, in fact, as the most honoured witness. He was 
therefore probably Margery's nephew, a son of John de Swyn- 
nerton, James Audley's squire, and a grandson of Sir Roger 
de Swynnerton, kt. Moreover, as in the previous generation 
a ' William de Thiknes ' and a ' John de Whitmore ' were 
companions of John de Swynnerton on campaign, so in the 
deed of Margery, Roger de Swynnerton is also linked with 
William de Thickness and John de Whitmore. And this 
Roger de Swynnerton, no doubt, is the ' Roger Swinnerton of 
Butterton ' mentioned by Chetwynd. 

In 1383 Roger de Swynnerton was outlawed for homicide. 
At a court held at Chester on the Tuesday after St. Barnabas, 
6 Ric. II., Roger de Swenarton was outlawed for the death of 
one Roger Nycholle. 1 For this homicide he must have been 
acquitted, or he must have procured, by money or service, a 
reversal of his sentence with its concomitant disabilities. 

There is another deed a Whitmore deed the original of 
which I have had before me. It treats of the lands of Sir 
John de Verdon, kt., lord of Annesley, Biddulph, Bucknall, 
and Darleston, which lands, by this deed, were divided between 
his two daughters and coheirs, Joan, and Ermentrude the 
wife of Ralph de Hooton, and the residue to Joan. This 
Joan was the wife of John, lord of Whitmore, afore- 
mentioned, and he had by her only two daughters, Elizabeth 
wife of John de Boghay, and Joan wife of Henry Clerke of 
Coventry. The deed or indenture bears date 28 January, 1 1 
Ric. II. (1388), and the witnesses are : Henrye de Delves, John 
de Delves, John de Hynkeley, ROGER de SWVNERTON, Thomas 
de Podmore, Thomas de Thiknese and others. 

The association of these names is not accidental. They 
are necessarily the names, with those of the Whitmores and 
the Burgylons in the former deed, of the principal tenants of 
the place. Thus, as an example, take the two first names on 
the list of witnesses. Henry de Delves and John de 
Delves of Whitmore were the sons of John de Delves, 
kt., said, as we have seen, to have been one of the four 
famous Staffordshire squires immortalized by Froissart, who 

1 Plea Roll, No. 86, m. 19 (Staff. Coll. xvi. 24). 



232 THE ANCESTOR 

were James de Audley's body-guard at Poictiers. 1 Not 
less significant is the particular conjunction of the names. 
These men de Hynkeley, de Podmore and de Thiknese, 
with John de Whitmore of the preceding deed, were the sons 
of 'John de Hinkele,' 'John de Podmore,' 'William de 
Thiknes,' and 'John de Whitemore,' companions in the same 
company of squires who, as we have seen, rode forth from 
Helegh Castle under James de Audley in 1345 for the wars 
in Gascony and Guienne. The accumulative evidence there- 
fore is irresistible for believing that Roger de Swynerton, the 
remaining witness, and John Swynerton, also of Whitmore 
(of whom more presently), were the sons of that John de 
Swynnerton who also marched and returned from and to the 
same place, under the same leader, and took part in the same 
expedition. 2 

In 13 Ric. II. 1389, Roger de Swenarton was amerced ^d. 
in the manor court of Newcastle, on the presentation of the 
frankpledges of Whitmore, for an assault on Thomas Robyn- 
son. 3 

In the same regnal year, on 29 May, 1390, in St. John's 
Street, near Clerkenwelle, he was a party to a singular trans- 
action with Sir Thomas Gerberge, against whom he took legal 
action in 1401, the details of which we shall give further on. 

' Roger de Swynnerton,' in the following account, comes 
before us however in another character. 

At the incoming of the fair month of May, to quote the 
language of old Froissart, 13 Ric. II. 1390, at a season of truce, 
three French knights undertook to maintain the lists against all 
comers, at Saint Inglevere, near Calais. Their names were 

1 Dutton, quoted as another of the famous four, lived, as above noted, at 
Maer, adjoining Whitmore and Swynnerton. Thus : Thomas fil. Rob'ti de 
Dotton mlHtis MAN ENS in Mere Thome fl Rid tie Stoinerton ter in feodo de 
Cherkton, etc., 20 Edw. III. 1346 (Harl. MS. 506). 

These Buttons settled in co. Staff, temp. Hen. III. when Vivian de Standon 
gave a fourth part of Maer and Aston to Thomas de Dutton in frank marriage 
with Philippe his daughter, which Philippe afterwards married John de 
Kokfeld from whom she was divorced (Staff. Coll. vi. I, 54 ; also viii. 175). 

2 Richard de Swynnerton and Thomas his son did not live at Whitmore 
but at Chorlton, where their capital messuage or mansion was situated. Thus 
in a deed of the lords of Chorlton, a copy of which is in the British Museum, 
a piece of the waste of Chorlton is conceded Thome fRo Ricardi de Stvinerton 
manenti in Cherleton, that is to Thomas son of Richard de Stvynnerton dtvelfing in 
Chorlton. Thomas died without any issue male (Harl. MS. 506). 

3 Newcastle Court Rolls. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 233 

Sir Boucicaut the younger, the Lord de Roye and the Lord 
de Saimpi. This tournament had been proclaimed in many 
countries, but especially in England, and Sir John Holand, 
with a great following, to the number of upwards of one 
hundred knights and squires, went over to attend it. Among 
his retinue he had a squire named John Savage, who married 
Maud, a great Staffordshire heiress, a daughter of Sir Robert 
de Swynnerton of Swynnerton, and a cousin of Roger de 
Swynnerton, of whom we are now treating. He had also 
another squire whom Froissart, who makes sad havoc of 
English names, calls ' Sequaqueton, a name which all the com- 
mentators agree to read ' Swinnerton.' 

The tournament began on Monday, 21 May, and lasted 
four days. The last tilt of the evening of the second day, 
Tuesday, the 22nd, was run by Swynnerton. His opponent 
was Renaud de Roye, concerning whom Froissart quaintly 
observes that at that time he was counted one of the stoutest 
jousters in France, and was smitten with love for a young lady 
that made all his affairs prosper. 1 Swynnerton he describes as 
' an able man-at-arms and an expert tilter.' 

c In the first course, being prepared and mounted, they 
spurred their horses, and gave violent strokes on their targets, 
without sparing each other. Swynnerton bore himself hand- 
somely, without falling, to the surprise of the spectators, for 
Sir Renaud's blow made him bend backward almost on the 
crupper of his horse ; but he raised himself, and gallantly 
finished his career with the loss only of his lance. 

* The second tilt they ran with great courage, and struck 
such blows on their helmets as made the fire fly from them. It 
was a handsome course and no damage done. 

* In the third tilt, Swynnerton was severely unhelmed and 
on the point of falling, both himself and his horse, for he 
staggered considerably. The squire, when on his feet, then 
returned to his companions, the tilting for that day being 



> 

over. 



'On Saturday, 26 May, the English party embarked in 

1 Pour le temps de lore il etoit un des forts et des roidcs jouteurs du 
royaume de France, et si amoit par amour jeune dame belle et frisque, dont 
en tous 6tats son affaire valoit grandement micux. 

1 The passage, as given in Buchon, is too interesting not to be quoted in 
the French : ' L'ecuyer dessus nommi revenu, un autre ecuyer se trait avant, 
qui s'appeloit Sequaqueton ; appert homme d'armes et bien joutant. II en- 



234 THE ANCESTOR 

passage-boats at Calais ; by mid-day they were at Dover, where 
they tarried till after mass on Sunday morning ; they lay Sun- 
day night at Rochester, and on the morning of Monday, 28 
May, they arrived in London.' So writes old Froissart (Johne's 
Translation). It is to be regretted that he neither mentions 
Swynnerton's Christian name nor gives his arms, as he does 
in the case of several of the other squires. 

Granting however that the Swynnerton of this tournament 
was Roger Swynerton, and the probabilities are heavily in his 
favour, it will be seen that he was in London, not in Stafford- 
shire, at the end of May, 13 Ric. II., and also that he was 
there quite in time for the execution of his bond with Sir 
Thomas Gerberge, as alleged by him in his suit which we shall 
presently quote. 

In 1 6 Ric. II. 13934, Roger de Swynnerton waylaid and 
slew John de Ipstones, kt., who was on his way to Westmin- 
ster as knight of the shire, and it was ordered by the Parlia- 
ment then sitting that he (' one Roger Swynerton ') * should 
not be released from the prison in which he had been immured, 
by bail, mainprise, or any other manner, until he had answered 
the said charge, and legally obtained his release. Canon Bridge- 
man is of opinion that this act of violence was committed by 
Roger de Swynnerton to avenge the outrage perpetrated by 



voya heurter sur la targe de guerre messire Regnault de Roye ; le chevalier 
repondit, car il dtoit tout prt d'avantage, monte sur son coursier, la targe au 
col et la lance en main. Les deux 6peronnerent et vinrent 1'un centre 
1'autre ; et se ferirent sur les targes moult dur et roide sans eux epargner. 
Sequaqueton se porta bien sans cheoir; dont on fut moult emerveille, car 
messire Regnault le consuivit de telle fa9on qu'il lui fit ployer I'e'chine sur la 
croupe de son cheval ; il se releva en passant outre moult franchement, mais 
il perdit son glaive. Quand il cut fait son tour et il fut revenu sur son lez, 
tant6t fut prit qui lui rendit son glaive. Si le prit et mit en erret ; et 
6peronna le cheval, et messire Regnault le sien. Si s'en vinrent et s'encon- 
trerent ; et se donnerent sur les heaumes trop durs horions, tant que on en 
vit voler les e^incelles de feu ; le coup fut bel ; ils n'y eurent point de dom- 
mage ; ils passerent outre, et retourna chacun sur son lez ; et s'appareillerent 
pour fournir la tierce lance ; et eperonnerent les chevaux et s'en vinrent 1'un 
contre 1'autre. De celle joute fut Sequaqueton d6sheaume moult dur et sur 
le point de cheoir lui et son cheval, car il chancela, mais il se renfourcha et se 
remit fort en estant sur ses pieds. II retourna voir ses gens et pour le jour 
il ne fit plus de joute. Aussi ne firent les autres, car le vSpre approchoit et 
ji etoit sur le tard.' 

1 ' Item, accorde est al request de la Commune q'un Roger Swynerton,' 
etc. (Rolls of Purl. iii. 317, a. 23). 



THE SWYNNERTONS 235 

John de Ipstones on his young cousin Maud de Peshall, nie 
Swynnerton, then a widow, in that on 8 December, 1388, he 
took her by force from Chetwynd to his castle of Ipstones, and 
there imprisoned her until she, per duriciam et cobercionem, was 
compelled to make a concession of her manor of Hopton and 
her other lands to the said John de Ipstones and his heirs, on 
condition that he should re-enfeoff her, etc., on certain con- 
ditions, upon which he married her to his son William de 
Ipstones, then fifteen years old. 1 No doubt Roger Swynner- 
ton bore an ancient grudge against John de Ipstones for such 
a dishonour. All the same, considering the nature of the 
times, the act had probably a political significance, and for 
the same reason Richard II. will have pardoned him, as we 
find him at large again soon after. It was the Parliament of 
1387 the ' Parliamentum sine misericordia ' which hanged so 
many of the king's personal friends. In 1394 Richard II. was 
ruling strongly and well, under favourable influences, and with 
some popularity. The Swynnertons were of his partisans, and 
Roger's uncle (as I suppose him to have been), Thomas de 
Swynnerton, who died in 1361, was, as shown above, brother- 
in-law to Thomas Holand, Earl of Kent, and so uncle by 
marriage to John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon and constable 
of the army, King Richard's most dear brother, his 'frater 
amicissimus.' Besides, at this time, Roger de Swynerton was 
apparently (as we shall show) the husband of Joan, widow of 
Sir John Salisbury, one of the king's special friends and sup- 
porters, who with many others had been judicially murdered, 
when in the king's service, through the violence of the Earl 
of Gloucester and others of the king's enemies. At any rate 
Roger de Swynerton escaped hanging, though he may have 
suffered fine as well as imprisonment. 

In 1 6 Ric. II., Easter, 1393, Edward de Acton sued Roger 
de Swynnerton to render a reasonable account for the time he 
was his bailiff at Walton near Chebsey. Roger did not ap- 
pear, etc. 

Walton near Chebsey was one of Sir John Salisbury's 
manors, and John Giffard of Chillington disputed his right to 
it, winning it after his death from his kinsman Nicolas Salis- 
bury. It must have passed into the sherifFs hands after Sir 
John Salisbury was attainted. Edward de Acton was one of 
the tenants there. 

1 Staff. Coll. vii. 45. Her third husband was Sir John Savage. 



236 



THE ANCESTOR 



At Michaelmas, 17 Ric. II. 1393, John Delves sued 1 Roger 
Swynarton of Cbebbesey ' and Richard de Peshall of Eccleshall 
for a debt of .20. The defendants did not appear, etc. 

These two entries serve to illustrate Roger de Swynerton's 
suit against Sir Thomas Gerberge, which we now proceed to 
give : 

DE BANCO PLEA ROLLS, MICH. 3 H. IV. 1401. 

Middlesex. Thomas Gerberge, Kt., was summoned at the suit of Roger 
Swynerton, armiger, to give up to him a sum of 50 marks which he unjustly 
detained, and Roger stated that the said Thomas on 291)1 May, 1 1 3 R. II. 
1390, in the Street of St. John, near Clerkenwelle, had entered into a bond 
with him to pay the said sum on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the 
Baptist next ensuing, and although frequently called upon to pay the debt he 
had hitherto refused to do so, and for which he claimed 40 as damages. 

Thomas Gerberge appeared in person and stated that the said Roger, 
under the name of Roger Swynarston, after the making of the bond, viz. on 
the last day of March [?May], 13 R. II., by an indenture which he produced 
in court, and which recited that whereas Thomas Swynburne, chivaler, and 
the said Thomas Gerberge were bound to the said Roger Swynerton in a sum 
of 100 marks as was more fully set out in the bond, and likewise that the said 
Thomas Gerberge by another deed was bound in a sum of 50 marks, he 
(Roger Swynerton) conceded for himself and his executors, that if Rustine 
Vylenoof, who formerly took to wife Joan, late wife of John Salisbury, chivaler, 
should not impede or resist that a divorce should be made between the said 
Rustine and Joan, that then the two bonds should be held as null and void, 
and Thomas Gerberge stated that the process of divorce at the suit of the said 
Roger Swynerton before Robert, the Bishop of London, between the said Rus- 
tine and Joan, had been carried out according to the ecclesiastical law, and a 
divorce bad been effected between the said Rustine and Joan, and the said 
Rustine had not impeded nor resisted the said divorce, and therefore the said 
Roger could not maintain his action. 

And Roger Swynerton denied that the indenture produced was his act 
and deed, and appealed to a jury, and as the indenture purported to be made 
at Westminster, the Sheriff of Middlesex was ordered to summon a jury for 
the Quindene of St. Hillary, and the indenture was to remain in the custody 
of William Pountfreyt, the King's clerk. A postscript states that the process 
was continued till the Quindene of St. Michael, 4 H. IV. 1402, when a jury 
returned a verdict that the indenture was not the act of Roger, and they 
assessed his damages at 5 marks. It was therefore considered that Roger should 
recover his debt, and the said damages, and the Sheriff was ordered to arrest 
the said Thomas Gerberge. 

Afterwards on 2Oth May, 4 H. IV. 1403, a writ of error was issued which 
transferred the suit to be heard again before the King (m. 480 dorso, Staff". 
Coll., xv. 99-100). 

1 The tournament party (V. ante) had arrived in London on 28 May. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 237 

And again, in 4 H. IV. Trinity. Middleiex. The suit in Banco of Roger 
de Swynncrton, armigcr, against Thomas Gcrbcrgc, knight, for a debt of 50 
marks, in which Thomas had been outlawed, was transferred coram Rtge, by a 
writ of error, and the outlawry was annulled (m. Z7). 

Here we have Roger de Swynnerton, the squire who in 
the same year distinguished himself in the tournament near 
Calais, the principal party in a plot for the dissolution of mar- 
riage between Rustine Vylenoof (Villeneuve) and his wife 
Joan, probably on the ground of a pre-contract followed by 
cohabitation. If the lady would acknowledge this the pope 
would grant a dissolution of the marriage. What was his 
object ? The fact is Joan Vylenoof was a daughter and co- 
heir of Sir John de Hastang, lord of Chebsey in Eccleshall, 
and she inherited Chebsey as part of her purparty. This lady 
had been previously married to Sir John Salisbury, who, as we 
have already pointed out, had incurred the enmity of Thomas, 
Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, and had been attainted 
and hanged in 1388. As bailiff at Sir John Salisbury's manor 
of Walton by Chebsey, Roger Swynnerton was a very near 
neighbour of Joan, when imagination may suggest that the 
intimacy between the two began and ripened, for it is not to 
be supposed that Joan was not acting in collusion with Roger 
in the matter of her divorce. At any rate divorced she was, 
and they must have married, for as we have just seen in the 
suit of Michaelmas, 1 7 Ric. II., Roger de Swynnerton became 
' ROGER SWYNARTON of CHEBBESEY.' 

The curious point in the case however is this. If Roger 
Swynnerton procured the divorce of Joan Vylenoof and after- 
wards married her, how came he to dare to move against Sir 
Thomas Gerberge ? My belief is that he did many her, 
perhaps privately, and that in 1401 when he brought his 
action Joan was deceased without issue by him. Roger 
Swynnerton was no longer Roger Swynnerton of Chebsey, 
and he may have thought that he could then repudiate his 
bond, granting that he ever made one, as to which the evi- 
dence is conflicting. 

We have seen that on 20 May, 4 Hen. IV. 1403, a 
writ of error was issued to transfer the suit to be heard 
again coram rege. Roger had however gone abroad, for on 
30 October, the year before, 1402, letters of protection 
were enrolled for * Roger Swynerton, alias dictum Swynarton,' 
who was in the king's service in Picardy, in the retinue of 

Q 



238 THE ANCESTOR 

the king's brother, John, Earl of Somerset, captain of the vill 
of Calais, available for a year. 1 

Letters of protection stayed all legal proceedings against 
a defendant in his absence on the king's service. Can the 
* alias dictum Swynarton ' have reference to the incriminating 
indenture, in which, as Sir Thomas Gerberge stated, he fig- 
ured ' under the name of Roger Swynarston ' ? 

Roger Swynnerton ended his days at Acton, a member of 
Swynnerton, adjoining Butterton in Whitmore. In two deeds 
of Hugh Colclogh, dated 7 and 9 Hen. IV. 1405 and 1407, 
concerning lands in Chorlton, 'which formerly belonged to 
Thomas son of Richard de Swynnerton,' he is the principal 
witness, in the first as ' Roger Swynnerton de Acton,' and in 
the other as ' Roger de Swinerton.' 2 He was still living in 
1418, when the Subsidy Roll of that year, 6 Hen. V., styles 
him ' Roger Swynerton de Acton, armiger.' 3 He could not 
then have been less than sixty-five, and he appears to have 
died without issue. 

in. JOHN DE SWYNERTON; OR < SWYNARTON 

There can be little doubt that John de Swynerton of Whit- 
more was a brother of Roger de Swynerton of the preceding 
chapter. 

It will be remembered that in 3 Ric. II. 1379, Roger de 
Swynarton had a suit of customs against Thomas de Sheprugg 
and John de Sheprugg his son. In 21 Ric. II. 1397, 13 
September, we have in the Manor Court Rolls of Newcastle 
Whitmore The frankpledges there presented John de 
Swenarton for an assault on John de Sbeperug, for which he is 
fined 4*/. and a penalty is also laid on the vill.* 

But on the same rolls there is a still earlier mention of 
him under the same index Wbitmore. On Saturday, the 
feast of St. Cecily, 6 Ric. II. (22 November, 1382), John de 
Swenarton sued Dame Wolneshes in a plea of debt ; and in 
the same year on the feast of St. Lucy the Virgin (13 Decem- 
ber), Dame Wolneshes of Whitmore is in mnericordia con- 
cerning the said debt to John de Swenarton.* 

On the same rolls under the index Whitmoxe, on St. 

1 Staff. Coll. * Harl. MS. 506. 

3 Subs. Rolls, Record Office. * Newcastle Manor Court Rolls. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 239 

Valentine's Day, 8 Hen. IV. (14 February, 1407), John Swy- 
narton with Thomas Wright, Richard de Admaston and 
Thomas de Ashe, became security for William Lawton that he 
would keep the peace towards Alice Carter, under a penalty 
of 20.' 

These various evidences are quite sufficiently strong to 
establish the truth of Chetwynd's statement that in 8 
Richard II. 1384, there was living a 'John Swinnerton of 
Butterton.' 

There is however something else. In Canon Bridgeman's 
History of the Swynnertons Chetwynd is quoted as saying that 
c John Swinnerton bought all the lands at Butterton, which 
had belonged to William Badkin of Fulford, in 7 Edw. II.' 
(1313), and in my Earlier Swynnertons of Ecclesball* I show 
that, if Chetwynd is right in the date, John Swinnerton must 
have been John de Swynnerton of Isewall, whose lands after- 
wards went to Lord Roger de Swynnerton of Swynnerton as 
next of kin. 

But Chetwynd may have written, and probably did write, 
7 Edw. II. by mistake for 7 Ric. II., a remark which is sug- 
gested by the following plea : 

Pleas of Assize taken at Lichfield on the Monday in the 
fourth week of Lent, 5 Ric. II. (Assize Roll, No. 1493) 

Staff. An assize, etc., if Adam de le Lombe, Robert son 
of Hugh de Burweston (Burston) near Stone and Joan his 
wife, John Pye and Margery his wife, and John de Ryder of 
Wareton and Isolde his wife, had unjustly disseised WILLIAM 
BATKIN of FULFORD and Elizabeth his wife, of two messuages, 
a toft, sixty acres of land, and the third part of a messuage 
in ACTON near Swynnerton and BOTURTON near Hancbircb. The 
jury stated that the plaintiffs had been disseised, vi et amis, 
by the defendants, and they assessed their damages at 6 6s. 8</. 
The plaintiffs therefore were to recover seisin of the tene- 
ments, and the sheriff was ordered to arrest the defendants. 

This suit was tried in 1382, and as Chetwynd records a 
John Swinnerton of Butterton as living in 1384, it is but 
reasonable to conclude that he was the purchaser of Badkin's 
lands. True, there were also Badkins of Fulford in the 
reign of Edward II., as the Subsidy Roll of 1327 shows. 
That however proves nothing. The one thing certain is that 
in 5 Ric. II. 1382, William Badkin of Fulford had entry into 
1 Staff. Coll. vol. Mti. 



2 4 o THE ANCESTOR 

certain lands in Butterton and Acton only through his wife 
Elizabeth, who seems to have been the relict (the second wife 
perhaps) of the former tenant, and whom the apparent heirs- 
at-law failed to dispossess. And the probability is that this 
was the ' William Badkin of Fulford ' mentioned by Chet- 
wynd, who, two years after, sold these lands to ' John Swin- 
nerton,' residing at the same place, and wisely too, if his title 
was so uncertain and so assailable. 

The following entry on the Newcastle Rolls shows John 
de Swynerton to have been the continuator of the line: 

In 3 Hen. IV., on the Saturday next before the feast ot 
St. Lucy the Virgin (13 December, 1401), ' ROGER son of 
JOHN de SWYNERTON,' is presented by the frankpledges of 
Hanchirche for an assault on John Elkyn, for which he is 
fined 3*/. This Roger in a suit of i May, 1445, is dis- 
tinctively styled ' ROGER SWYNARTON of BOTURTON, M not how- 
ever that he was ever lord of Butterton, but that all these 
Swynnertons of Whitmore held lands there. 

The suit is one in which he complains of Nicholas Browne 
of Hanchirche and other tenants there in a plea of customs. 1 
At the same court Roger Swynarton apparently obtains some 
concession with respect to a hedge and ditch on the road 
leading from Boturton to Hanchirche. 1 

The following notices from the Court Rolls of Newcastle 
probably refer to the brothers or near relations of Roger 
Swynnerton : 

On 4 October, 12 Hen. IV. 1410, Nicholas de Swyner- 
ton is successful in a plea against John del Wodde, when 
the latter is fined id. On 10 October, 6 Hen. VI. 1427, 
Nicholas de Swynarton is amerced in the sum of 6d. for 
breaking the assize of beer, on the presentation of Richard 
de Bromley and John Shokelage, the frankpledges of Whit- 
more. On the Saturday next before the Feast of Edmund 
the King, 24 Hen. VI. 1445, Stephen Swynerton by William 
Lovat his attorney, sues Roger Burgelon for a debt. To these 
should be added the following : 

De Banco, 6 Hen. IV. Michaelmas (xvi. 44). Staff. 'Thomas 
son of Nicholas de Swynerton ' sued Thomas Shepherd of 
Charnes, William Blest, cartwright, and Reynold Cowper of 
Charnes, for killing his mare at Charnes, which was worth 

1 Newcastle Manor Court Rolls at Newcastle. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 241 

40*., and taking a mare and colt belonging to him from the 
same place worth 40;. Defendant did not appear (m. 259, 
dorso). 

The Butterton pedigree in Burkes Landed Gentry refers 
to c Roger Swinnerton of Butterton,' under date 1 6 Hen. VI. 
1437-8. Roger Swynnerton of Butterton appears to have 
had several sons : John the eldest, Thomas the ancestor of the 
succeeding Swinnertons of Butterton, and probably Richard. 

Of these sons, Thomas, who married a Clayton heiress, 
appears to have bought out his brothers' interest in Butter- 
ton, for in 33 Hen. VI. 1455, in a deed of Thomas son of 
Thomas Clayton of Clayton Griffin, on the Wednesday next 
before the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, he appears in the 
witness clause as ' Thomas Swynarton de Butterton.' ' The 
third (supposed) brother Richard occurs, 6 May, 8 Edw. IV. 
1468, as a juror at the manor court of Tunstall ; and in 
October of the same year the vill of Brerehurst is amerced 
4</. on the presentment of the frankpledges there,] because 
Richard de Swynnerton and Joan Elyot owed suit and ser- 
vice and failed to appear.* 

Roger Swynnerton of Butterton however must have de- 
ceased by 1447, for in that year we find him represented by 
JOHN son of ROGER de SWYNARTON. In 25 Hen. VI. 1447, 
on the Monday next before the Feast of St. Margaret the 
Virgin, Sir John Kerbyle, the chaplain of the parish of 
Newcastle-under-Lyme, conferred by charter on ' John son 
of Roger de Swynarton,' 3 William Lovott of Halleclayton 
and Thomas son of John de Clayton, senior, dwelling in 
Weston Coyne, all the lands, tenements, etc., which he, 
Robert Kerbyle and Henry Penckehull, chaplain, lately had 
in trust of the gift and enfeoffment of John Clayton of 
Halleclayton, late deceased, to have and to hold, etc., to the 
aforesaid 'John Swynarton,' etc., etc., which also the said 
Robert and his heirs, etc., will warrant, etc., to the afore- 
said ' John son of Roger de Swynarton,' etc., against all men. 
Witnesses, John Machon of Penckehull, Roger his son, and 
others. 4 



1 Original Deed at Trentham penes the Duke of Sutherland. 

2 Court Rolls of Tunstall at Keele Hall. 

1 The name is written Swyn'rton = either Swynarton or Swynerton. 

* Original deed at Trentham. 



242 THE ANCESTOR 

An account of the further descendants of these Swynnertons 
of Whitmore will be found in the History of the Family of 
Swynnerton, published by the Stafford Historical Society (vol. 
vii.). 

NOTE. There cannot be a doubt, as Harwood in his Introduction to 
Erdesvilck remarks, that at this period younger, and especially poorer, families 
began to difference the spellings of their names by way of distinction. These 
Swynnertons retained the spelling ' Swynerton,' ' Swenarton ' (or ' Swynarton ') 
up to the time of Henry VIII., when the older spelling with the double 
was reverted to. In the time of Cromwell i supplemented y, thus reverting 
to a still older type, that of the twelfth century, when the name almost invari- 
ably appears as ' Swinnerton ' or ' Swinerton.' At the present day the tend- 
ency in personal names is in favour of ' y ' to the displacement of ' i'. 



THE SWYNNERTONS 243 

DESCENT OF THE SWYNNERTONS OF YEW TREE AND BUTTERTON, WITH 
OTHER PLACES IN THE DEMESNE OF WH1TMORE, Co. STAFFORD. 

Sir Roger de Swynnerton, a banneret = Maude 
lord of Swynncrton, etc., 1298-1338 : 



* John dc Swynnerton ' of Whitmorc. A = Joan relict in 1 362 
younger son. Oc. 1345; 1351; 1362 I 

I I 

' Roger de Swynerton ' * of = Joan, dau. and co-h. (>t Sir John de ' John dc Swynerton ' * of 

Whitmore. Oc. 1375- Hastang, lord of Chebey. Firt Whitmore. Oc. 1382; 

1418. Third husband. Ob. husband, Sir John Salisbury, 1384; 1407 
s. p. hanged 1388; second husband, 
Rust in Villcneuve 



* John son 



4 Roger son of John de Swynerton ' * of Whitmore, 
'of Boturton,' etc. Oc. 1407-45 



fi of Roger de Swynerton' 1 Thomas of Butterton, = Margaret dau. of Thos. 

Whitmore. Oc. 1446-68 younger son. Oc. 1454- I Clayton of Ridge Hill 

89. Ancestor of the I son and heir of Hugh 
later ' Swinnertons 
Butterton' 



Roger son of John Swynnerton ' 
of Whitmore. Oc. 1479-1513 



of Butterton, = Margaret dau. of Thos. 
son. Oc. 1454- I Clayton of Ridge Hill 
tcestor of the I son and heir of Hugh 
winner-tons of I Clayton 

A 



John son of Roger Swynnerton = Alice Richard son of Roger Swynnerton of = 



ef Whitmorc. Oc. 1510-47. 
Ob. 1547 



Whitmore. Oc. 1503-47. Ob. 1547. 
Ancestor of the Swinnertons of Betley 
and Douglas 



I 



Roger son of John Swynnerton of = Amy t 
Whitmore. Oc. 1547. Ob. 1575 



John son of Roger Swynnerton of Whitmore. Edward Swynnerton = Margaret 
B. before 1547. Ob. April, 1560, s. p. of Whitmore. Ob. I 

Feb. 1635 

Edward becoming the continuator of the line there comes now a succession of fire 
Edwards, and ' Roger ' and ' John ' cease to be used as the distinctive names, in alternation, 
of eldest sons. It will be seen however that the sequence of the two distinctive names 
'John ' and ' Roger ' had been strictly observed right down from the first. For the rest of 
the pedigree see Canon Bridgcman's Hilary of the Svynitertoni (Staff. Col. yol. vii.) 

1 Also ' Swynarton ' and ' Swenarton.' 

CHARLES SWYNNERTON. 



244 THE ANCESTOR 



A CHARTER OF GOSPATRIK 

AMONGST the deeds which I was permitted' [to see 
when in October, 1 902, 1 was working among the West- 
morland muniments at Lowther for the Victoria History of the 
Counties, was one which from the first perusal I saw was of 
exceeding interest. It had had but little chance of being 
noticed ; its decipherment and its interpretation' presented 
sundry difficulties. For it was not the original deed. It 
seemed to have plain evidence of being a copy of a copy. It 
was in a dialect of Anglo-Saxon ; but the letters are not all 
Anglo-Saxon, and the style of some of them reminds one 
strongly of the letters in the Latin charters of the end of the 
twelfth century. The first copy seems to have been made 
when the language called Anglo-Saxon was still a living tongue, 
and while the letters of the Anglo-Saxon alphabet could still 
be easily read. In some of the words the Anglo-Saxon p is 
used ; but the proper names have the initial combination Th, 
and there is the unusual ' theam ' for ' team ' and ' gyrth ' for 
' gri*.' After the coming of King William and the Normans 
this p was sometimes mistaken for P, and later for y as 
' ye ' for * the ' reminds us. In Westmorland deeds I found 
it occasionally used in thirteenth century documents (e.g. 
Loupre for Lowther). And the old dialect was still to be 
' understanded of the people,' even at the end of the four- 
teenth century. To this the motto of the Cliburn (Clibborn) 
family seems to bear witness. This could not possibly belong 
to an earlier time, for only late in the days of Edward III. did 
that family assume the name of Cliburn. The motto, inter- 
esting I think as a rare example of a mediaeval English 
motto, was * Ne lof clibbor ne (na) sceame,* ' and was handed 
down with various loppings till in the seventeenth century it 
came to the unmeaning ' Clibbor ne sceame.' In the four- 
teenth century one might accordingly suppose that a copyist 
could still read and understand the twelfth century copy of 
the deed. But the existing copy shows plain signs I think of 
having been made later by one who knew little if anything of 
Anglo-Saxon letters or Anglo-Saxon words. There seems an 
* ' Neither praise clings nor disgrace ' (shame). 



A CHARTER OF GOSPATRIK 245 

uncertainty e.g. about some of the shapes of the letters, as 
if the copyist had to look twice in order to distinguish be- 
tween p (th) p (w) and y (y) ; and some words needed for 
the sense are omitted and other words appear misread. 

The dialect of the deed as might be conjectured from the 
position of Cumberland a borderland * inhabited by mixed 
races shows disintegration of inflectional endings and of 
other grammar, as does the motto quoted above (with c sceame ' 
for ' sceamu') ; and one traces in it, in the matrix of the Anglo- 
Saxon, Gaelic, Cymric and Norse. 

It was of no use I found to attempt interpretation from 
a mere transcript and without an accurate drawing, which I 
had neither permission nor time to make, or else without a 
photograph to study. For this I begged, and a photograph 
was taken and a copy sent me towards the end of the year. 
The attention thus drawn to the deed has naturally awakened 
an interest which grows. 

By means of the photograph it was possible to overcome 
some of the difficulties and to attempt to restore the text, 
and to interpret it. For some very acute suggestions in the 
rendering I was indebted to a friena and neighbour Mr. Ber- 
tram Bevan-Petman of King's College, Cambridge ; and before 
he left for India, in January last, the following translation was 
completed and sent to the editors of the Victoria History. 

It will be remembered that Gospatrik the contemporary of 
Earl Siward was English only by the mother's side, his father 
being of Scottish descent. The allusion to Earl Siward seems 
to offer a possibility of suggesting a date. Siward was Earl of 
Northumberland up to 1055. Gospatrik was not earl thereof 
till 1067. It would seem that this deed dates from the time 
when Earl Siward was Earl Gospatrik's overlord. 

I have but made philological comment on what seemed to 
press most for remark. The historical interest of the deed 
will perhaps appeal to readers of the Ancestor more than the 
philological. 

1 The district is called Fames (Furness) in Galewaythe (Galloway) once 
in Rot. Cur. Reg. 37 Hen. III. (I quote the reference from Bain, Document! 
llluitrativc of Scottish History.) 



246 



THE ANCESTOR 



TEXT 

Gospatrik greot ealle mine was- 
senas and hyylkun mann freo and 
tSrenge )>eo woonan on eallun J>am 
landann J>eo weoron Combres and 
eallun mine kynling freondlycc, and 
ic cytSe eoy J>set myne mynna 1 is 
and full leof Jaet Thorfynn 2 mac 
There beo swa freo on eallan 
Synges J>eo beo myne on Alnerdall 
swa senyg mann beo oSer ic otier 
asnyg myne wassenas on weald s on 
freyft 4 on heyninga 5 and set allun 
ftyngan J>eo byn eoriJe bcenand and 
tSeorontier to Shauk to Wafyr to 
poll WaSeen to bek Troyte and }>eo 
weald set Caldebek and ic wille J-aet 
)>eo mann 6 bydann mio" Thorfynn 
set CartSeu and CombeSeyfoch beo 
swa freals mytS hem swa Melmor 
and Thore and Sygolf weoron on 
Eadread dagan and ne beo neann 

1 mynna must be the word which existed 
in Old Saxon as ' minna.' 

3 Thorfynn mac Thore. Thorfynn is a 
Norse name and so is Thore. One would 
naturally expect here Thorfynn Thoressen 
(Thoreson), but there is a parallel in the 
name of a witness to a deed of Rushen 
Abbey, Isle of Man, circ. 1300. St. Bees 
MS. (Harleian, 434), 'Thorfinn mac 
Thoryn.' The mac is of course Gaelic. 

3 weald seems to represent the Norse 
vollr=veldt, open land. 

4 freyS. I take to be firth = fiord. 

5 heyninga. Compare Norse 'hegna,' 
to enclose ; Danish ' hegn,' hedge, and 
Ihe Cumberland and Westmorland names 
' hay.' 

J>eo ()>e ?) seems here omitted. 



TRANSLATION 

I Gospatrik greet all my vassals 
and each man free and serf that 
dwell in all the lands that were 
Cumbrian a and all my kindred 
kindly, and I do you to wit that 
my desire is and it is most com- 
pletely to my wish that Thorfynn 
mac Thore be as free in all things 
that are mine in Alnerdall b as any 
man is either I or any of my vassals, 
on field on frith on enclosed land, 
and in regard to all things that 
dwell on the earth and under, as far 
as Shauk," Wafyr, d Pool Watheen,' 
bek Troyte ' and the open field at 
Caldebek,' and I will that the men 
that dwell with Thorfynn at Cart5eu b 
and at Combet5eyfoch b be as free to- 
gether with him as Melmor and 
Thore and Sygolf were on Bad- 
read's ' days ; and let no man be 

B Combres. Mr. Bevan-Petman thought 
this might be the genitive of a personal 
name.'.but it seems more natural to me to 
take it as an adjective with the ending 
lost or omitted by the copyist, viz. Com- 
bresc (for Combraisc)= Cumbrian. 

" Alnerdall =Uldale, the dale of the 
river Ellen. 

Shauk. The 'sh' is difficult. Its 
representative in Anglo-Saxon is ' See,' 
but the identification is easy. Chalkbeck 
discharges itself into the Wampool near 
Thursby (Thoresby). 

d Wafyr (f soft as in Welsh ?)= river 
Waver near Wigton in the same district. 

e Pol Watheen. River Wampole. The 
loss of 'th' in the name will not offer 
difficulty to students of Gaelic nor students 
of Cumbrian place names. Analogies are 
in Welsh Pwl-heli, Pwlcrochan and Welsh- 
pool as an Anglicised form. Pwll=pool 
(turbid ?). 

* bek Troyte, Troytebeck or Troutbeck. 
I have not been able to identify this in 
that district. 

e Caldebek. In Caldbeck Fell and near 
it the above streams rise. 

h Cardew and Cumdivock are both in 
the district where the above streams are, 
near Thursby and Dalston. Combe'Sey- 
foch I am tempted to suggest=Cwmbethey- 
fach, Cwmbethey the little, like Y Glyder 
fach (the little Glyder) near Snowdon. 

' Eadread should, I think, be Ealdread, 
who was Earl of Northumberland after 
Uhtred, i.e. after 1016. He was of Gos- 
patrik's kindred. 



A CHARTER OF GOSPATRIK 247 



mann swa Seorif 7 (b)ehat 8 mit5 }>aet 
ic heobbe gegyfene to hem ne ghar 
brech seo gyrth Syylc Eorl Syward 
and ic hebbe gecyften hem cefre- 
lycc 9 swa aenyg mann leofand )>eo 
welkynn SeoronSer and lot 10 hyyl- 
kun u byn J>ar bytSann geyldfreo 
beo swa ic byn and swa willann ia 
Waltheof and Wygande and Wy- 
berth and Gamell and Knyth 1S and 
eallun mine kynling and wassenas 
and ic wille )>set Thorfynn heobbe 
soc and soc toll and theam ofer 
eallun pam landan on CarSeu and 
on CombeSeyfoch paet weoran gy- 
fene Thore on Moryn dagan freols 
myd bode and wytnesmann on }>yylk 
stow. 

" tSeorif, I think, is an error for fleorof, 
' thereof ; compare tSeoronSer above. 

8 The text is here confused, I think, by 
omissions, and I conjecture it might run : 
' swa Seorof behat miS )>set ket ic heobbe 
gegyfene swa At to hem nahwar brech seo 
gyrth ' ; and translated as I have rendered 
it. gyrth=grith, grr5, and the first letter 
of behat is blotted. 

* cefrelycc, I think, is a copyist's error 
for swa freolicc (i.e. freolice). 

10 lot, probably error for ' let." 

11 t>e is apparently omitted. 

18 willann I thought at first was a per- 
sonal name and that ' and ' was omitted. 
But Mr. Bevan-Petman comparing woonan 
above takes it for a verb. To this after 
some thought I have consented. But a 
personal name or family name Willan 
occurs in Westmorland documents much 
later. 

13 Kunyth I took as being probably = 
Knut (Canute) ; Mr. Bevan-Petman sug- 
gested Kenneth. 



so angred(?) on account of this 
that I have bestowed this on him 
that he anywhere breaks the peace 
which Earl Siward and I have pro- 
claimed to him as freely as any man 
living under heaven, and let each 
that dwells there be geld free as I 
am. And so will Waltheof and 
Wygande and Wyberth and Gamell 
and Kunyth and all my kindred 
and vassals ; and I will that Thor- 
fynn have soc and sac and toll and 
team over all the lands at CarSeu 
and CombeSeyfoch that were given 
to Thore in Moryn's days by pro- 
clamation and before witnesses at 
that place. 



FREDERICK W. RAGG. 



248 THE ANCESTOR 



THE BARONS' LETTER TO THE POPE 

THE SEALS OF THE BARONS' LETTER 
(Continued) 

XV. 

HUGH DE VERE, LORD OF SWANSCOMBE in Kent, second 
son of Robert, fifth Earl of Oxford, was born about 1264. 
He had Swanscombe by a great marriage with Denise, daugh- 
ter and heir of Sir William de Monchensi, which William's 
mother was one of the sisters and coheirs of Anselm Marshal, 
Earl of Pembroke. He died about 1313 leaving no issue. 
He bore these arms at Caerlaverock. 

SEAL. A shield of his arms quarterly with a molet in the quarter and a border 
engrailed. Above is a wild boar (verres), the badge of Vere, and two 
wingless dragons are at the sides. SIGILL' HVGONIS DE VEER. 

XVI. 

WILLIAM DE BREOUSE, LORD OF GOWER in south Wales, 
succeeded his father, another William, in 1290. He was a 
soldier in the Welsh and Scottish wars, and had the character 
of being a great waster of his substance. He died without 
issue male in 19 Edward II. 

SEAL. A shield of his arms erusilly with a &> S' WILL'I DE BREOVSE 
D'NI HONOR' DE BREMBR' & DE GOER' 

COUNTERSEAL of an engraved gem a lion setting his paw upon a dragon or 
wyvern. Below the lion is a millrind cross and above a flying eagle (?) 

XVII. 

ROBERT DE MOHAUT, LORD OF HAWARDEN in Flint, was 
born about 1270 and succeeded as heir of his brother Roger 
in 1297. He served in Scotland and France, and died with- 
out issue in 1329. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a lion with two wryerns at the sides. S 1 RO- 
BERTI DE MOVNALT. 









20 





10 



21 




SEALS OF THE BARONS' LETTER 249 

XVIII. 

ROBERT OF TATESHALE, LORD OF BUCKENHAM in Norfolk, 
was aged twenty-four at the death of his father, another 
Robert, in 1298. He was in the Gascon and Scottish wars. 
At the age of fourteen he married Eve de Tibetot, the bride 
being under thirteen years of age. He died 31 Edw. I., 
leaving an only son who died young. 

SEAL. A shield of arms checkered with a chief ermine and a label (of three pen- 
dants). S' ROBERTI DE TATESHALE. 

XIX. 

REYNOLD DE GREY, LORD OF RUTHYN in the marches of 
Wales, was son and heir of Sir John de Grey, steward of 
Gascony, who was a second son of Grey of Greys Thurrock, 
the main line of this house. He succeeded his father in 
50 Hen. III., and was Justice of Chester. He died 
i Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms barry with a label (of five pendants)* SlfGILLJVM 
R[E]GINA[LDI] DE GREY. 

XX. 

HENRY DE GREY, LORD OF CODNOR in Derbyshire, was 
son and heir of John Grey of Codnor, grandson of Henry 
Grey, the first Grey of Greys Thurrock, the housefather of 
this great house or Grey. He succeeded his father in 56 
Hen. III., and served in Wales, France and Scotland. He 
died 2 Edw. II. 
SEAL. A shield of arms barrj. DE LEAVTE S[ERVA]VNTE [?} 

This seal only remains to the A copy of the letter. 

XXI. 

HUGH BARDOLFE, LORD OF WORMEGAY in Norfolk, was 
born 29 September, 1259, and succeeded his father in 1289. 
He followed Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, at Caerlaverock, 
where he bore on his banner of azure three cinqfoils of fine 
gold. The songmaker calls him rich, valiant and courteous. 
He died in 1304. 

SEAL. A shield of arms three cinqjolh. 

1 These well known arms are most quaintly described in the printed 
catalogue of the British Museum seals as 'barry of one.' 



250 THE ANCESTOR 

XXII. 

ROBERT DE TONY, LORD OF MAUD CASTLE in the marches 
of Wales, succeeded his father Ralph de Tony in 1264. He 
died s.p. 3 Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a sleeve. CHEVALER [AL MIRE ?]. 

XXIII. 

WILLIAM DE Ros, LORD OF HAMLAK.E in Yorkshire, was 
aged 30 years at his father's death in 1285, and was one of 
the claimants for the Scottish crown in 1292. In Scotland he 
held the offices of King's Lieutenant and Joint Warden of the 
West Marches. He died 10 Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms three water bougets with two wingless dragons or 
wyverns at the sides. S' WILLELMI DE ROS. 

This seal remains only on the A copy of the letter. 

XXIV. 

ROBERT DE CLIFFORD, CASTELLAN OF APPLEBY, was aged 
about seven years at his father's death in 1282, and succeeded 
Roger his grandfather in 1286. He was killed at Bannock- 
burn in 1314. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a fesii in a checkered Md with six rings round the 
shield. S' ROBERTI DE CLIFORT. 



XXV. 

PETER DE MAULEY,I LORD OF MULGRAVE in Yorkshire, 
and the fourth of the seven Peters of his line, had livery of his 
lands in 7 Edw. I. and was a soldier in Wales, Scotland and 
France. He died in 1310. 

SEAL. The knight galloping 'on horseback sword in hand. Horse and rider 

have the fan crest. The shield and horse-trappers bear his arms a bend. 

S' PETRI DE MALO LACV TERCII. This seal must be that 

of the third Peter de":Mauley, father of the sealer. 
COUNTERSEAL. A shield of the arms of Mauley, with a leopard at the top 

and two more at the sides of the shield. SEEL- PRIVE -SVY -APELE.i 

1 The beasts round the shields are wrongly described in the B.M. cata- 
logue of seals as rampant. Sir N. Harris Nicolas speaks of the fourth word 
of the counterseal inscription as ' not to be easily explained ' ! 






26 




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% 

Wl^ 

28 





2SB 



2 9 






SEALS OF THE BARONS' LETTER 251 

XXVI. 

PHILIP OF KYME, LORD OF KYME in Kesteven, was in 
the French and Scottish wars, and died in 16 Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms trustify with a chevenm between three wingless 
dragons. CHER AMI FETES PVR MAI. This shield is else- 
where found in use as a counterseal to a larger one. 

XXVII. 

[ROBERT FITZ ROGER, LORD OF CLAVERING in Essex, son 
of Roger fitz John of Clavering, succeeded his father in 1249. 
With his son John he appeared before Caerlaverock. He 
died in 1310. His seal is not found amongst those fastened 
to the letter.] 

XXVIII. 

JOHN DE MOHUN, LORD OF DUNSTER in Somerset, suc- 
ceeded his father at the age of ten years in 1279. He died 
about 1330. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a cms engrailed. S' IOHANIS DE MOVN. 
The shield is hung round the neck of an eagle and has a lion passant on 
either side. 

XXIX. 

AYUERY DE SAINT AMAND, LORD OF WODEHAY in Berk- 
shire, was born in 1267 or 1268, and was heir to his elder 
brother Guy. He was Governor of Bordeaux for the King 
in 1304, and died without issue in 1310. 

SKAL. A shield of arms -fretty with a chief and three roundels thereon between 
three wingless dragons. S' ALMAVRICI OE S'C'O AMENDO. 

XXX. 

ALAN LA ZOUCHE, LORD OF ASHBY de la Zouche in 
Leicestershire, and descended of a family which, by variously 
traced pedigrees, claimed descent from the house of Brittany, 
was aged eighteen at his father's death in 13 Edw. I. He 
served in Gascony and Scotland, and was Governor of the 
castle of Rockingham and Steward of the forest. He died 
without male issue in 7 Edw. II. 

SKAL. A shield of arms ten roundels hung round the neck of a lion. Round 
the shield are six little lions from the shield of the Longespees. 
SIGILLVM ALANI LASOVCHE. 



252 THE ANCESTOR 

XXXI. 

WILLIAM DE FERRERS, LORD OF GROBY in Leicestershire, 
was aged eighteen at his father's death in 1288 and died in 
1 8 Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms seven voided lozenges hung from the neck of an 
eagle with two heads. SIGILL' WILL'I DE FERARIIS. 

XXXII. 

THEOBALD DE VERDUN, LORD OF WEOBLEY in Hereford- 
shire, was son of John de Verdun who was killed in Ireland 
in 1278. He died in 1309 at his castle of Alton in Stafford- 
shire. 

SIAL. The knight galloping on horseback, sword in hand. The horse-trap- 
pers and shield have the arms fretty. SIGILLVM THEOBALDI DE 
VERDVN. 

XXXIII. 

THOMAS DE FURNIVAL, LORD OF SHEFFIELD in Yorkshire, 
had livery in 1281 of the lands of his father Gerard. He 
died in 



SEAL. A shield of arms a bend and six martlets upon a burelly ground 
with a lion passant (or rampant) on either side of the shield. 
SIGILLVM THOME DE FOVRNIVAL. 

XXXIV. 

THOMAS DE MULTON, LORD OF EGREMONT in Cumber- 
land, succeeded his father, another Thomas, in 1294. He 
died in 1321-2. 

SEAL. The knight galloping his horse, sword in hand. The shield and trap- 
pers have the arms three bars. The helm and the horse's head both 
bear the fan crest. SIGILLVM THOME DE MOVLTON. 

XXXV. 

WILLIAM LE LATIMER, LORD OF CORBY, called the rich 
Latimer, was son and heir of another William, and had Corby 
by marriage about 1257 with Alice, daughter and coheir of 
John Ledet alias Braybrooke of Braybrooke in Northants. 
He was of the king's party in the barons' wars and took the 
cross in 1270. He died in 1305. 

SEAL. Shield of arms a cms paty between two wingless dragons. 
S' WILLELMI LE LATIMER. 




33 



i*%, 

, '', 

^ . 





35 





37 






42 



SEALS OF THE BARONS' LETTER 253 

XXXVI. 

THOMAS OF BERKELEY, LORD OF BERKELEY in Gloucester- 
shire, was born at Berkeley in 1245. He fought as a lad at 
Evesham and is said to have followed the king's wars for the 
last fifty years of his long life. He was at Falkirk and 
Caerlaverock and was a prisoner after Bannockburn in 1313. 
He died in 1321. 

SEAL. A shield of arms criuilh formy with a cheverm. SIGILLVM THOME 
DE BERKELE. 

XXXVII. 

FULK FITZ WARINE, LORD OF WHITTINGTON in Shrop- 
shire, was son of Fulk who was killed in the king's party 
at Lewes in 1264. He proved his age in 1273 and served in 
Wales, Scotland and Flanders. He died about 1315. 

SEAL. A shield of arms quarterly indented between two dragons. S" FVL- 
CONIS FILM [?] WARINI. 

XXXVIII. 

JOHN OF SEGRAVE, LORD OF SEGRAVE in Leicestershire, was 
aged thirty-nine years at his father's death in 1295 and was 
one of the knights before Caerlaverock. He was a prisoner 
after Bannockburn and died during the great sickness in 
Gascony in 1325. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a Km between two of the three sheaves which 
were the old arms of Segrave. S 1 lOH'IS DE SEGRAVE. 

XXXIX. 

EDMUND DE EYNCOURT, LORD OF THURGARTON in Not- 
tinghamshire, succeeded his father before 1257. He died in 
1327 without surviving male issue. 
SEAL. A shield of arms blUety with a dance with four lions passant at the 



corners. 

XL. 

PETER CORBET, LORD OF CAUS in Salop, succeeded his 
father the year before the barons' letter. He died without 
issue in 15 Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms two corbies between two wingless dragons. 
SIGILLVM PETRI CORBET. 

1 The B.M. catalogue of seals has the following very remarkable piece of 
blazon for this shield : ' Billette'e of six pieces, three, two and one, on a chief 
a fesse dancettee, and label of four points ' ! 

R 



254 THE ANCESTOR 

XLI. 

WILLIAM DE CAUNTELOW, LORD OF RAVENSTHORPE, was 
presumably the William of that family, son and heir of 
Nicholas de Cauntelow of Ilkeston, co. Derby, and of Gresley, 
co. Notts. He was summoned to Parliament as a baron from 
1299 and 1308 and died in 1309. Nothing appears to be 
known of the right by which he styled himself Lord of 
Ravensthorpe. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a fesse vair between three fleurs de lys. S' WILLELMI 
DE CANTILVPO. 



XLII. 

JOHN DE BEAUCHAMP, LORD OF HACHE in Somerset, suc- 
ceeded his father in 1284 at the age of ten years. He was 
governor of Bridgewater Castle and died in 1336. 

SEAL. A shield of arms vair borne upon an eagle. SIGILL 1 IOHANNIS 
DE BELLO CAMPO. 



XLIII. 

ROGER DE MORTIMER, LORD OF PENTKELLYN in Wales, 
was a younger son of the chief of his name, Sir Roger of 
Wigmore. He was justiciary of Wales in 1322, and in 1332 
he and his nephew the Lord Mortimer of Wigmore were im- 
prisoned for their part against the Despensers. He died in 
the Tower of London in 1336. He was Lord of Chirk in 
Denbigh. 

SEAL. A shield of arms MORTIMER with the escutcheon ermine between two 
leopards. [S> ROGE]R[I D]E MORTV[O MAPI D'NI D]E 
PENKETLYN. 

XLIV. 

JOHN FITZ REYNOLD, LORD OF BLENLEVENY in Wales, 
son and heir of Reynold fitz Peter, succeeded his father in 
1286 and died in 3 Edw. II. 

SEAL. The knight on a galloping horse, sword in hand. The shield and 
trappers bear the arms three lions. S' lOH'IS FIL'I REGINALD!. 

This seal only remains attached to the A copy of the letter. 






45 






4/ 



49 





53 








59 




SEALS OF THE BARONS' LETTER 255 

XLV. 

RALPH DE NEVILL, LORD OF RABY in Durham, succeeded 
his grandfather Robert at Raby in 1282 and died in 1331. 
Of this person, almost alone amongst the barons of the letter, 
no military service is recorded, but he is noteworthy as having 
begun the long family quarrel with the prior of Durham over 
the question of a rent day dinner. 
SEAL. A shield of arms a saltire. S' RADVLFI DE NEVILE. 

XLVI. 

BRIAN FITZ ALAN, LORD OF BEDALE in Yorkshire, suc- 
ceeded his father before 1276 and was the king's lieutenant in 
Scotland in 1297. He died without male issue about 1305. 

SEAL. An indistinct impression of a device apparently a Janus head with 
three or more faces. 1 TOT CAPITA TOT 8ENTENCIE. 

XLVII. 

WILLIAM MARSHAL, LORD OF HINGHAM in Norfolk, suc- 
ceeded his father in 1283 at the age of five years. He was in 
the wars in Scotland and died in 1314. His ancestor John 
Marshal, who is said to have been marshal of Ireland under 
King John, married a daughter and coheir of Hubert de Rye 
of Hingham. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a bend engrailed between two marshals' staves, 
speaking of the marshal's office of Ireland. S' WILL'I MARESCALLI. 

XLVIII. 

WALTER OF HUNTERCOMBE, LORD OF HUNTERCOMBE in 
Oxfordshire, was of full age in 55 Hen. III. when he suc- 
ceeded his father. He held many posts under the crown, 
having been governor of the Isle of Man, governor of Edin- 
burgh Castle, and warden of the Northumbrian marches. He 
was at the siege of Caerlaverock and died without issue in 6 
Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms ermine with two gmel-bars between two winged 
wyverns. S' WALTERI DE HVNTERCVMBE. 

1 This is the only interpretation which seems possible. That opinions 
may differ is shown by the description by Nicolas of this device on a 
square two birds, a rabbit, a stag and a pig \ 



256 THE ANCESTOR 

XLIX. 

WILLIAM MARTIN, LORD OF KEMEYS in Pembroke, suc- 
ceeded his grandfather Nicholas Martin of Kemeys in 1282. 
He died in 1325. 

SEAL. A shield of arms two bars. S' WILL'I MARTINI. 

L. 

HENRY DE TYES, LORD OF CHILTON, is a baron of whom 
little is known save that he was summoned as a baron from 
129! to 1307 and died about i Edw. II. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a cheveron with a beardless head above it, prob- 
ably a blackamoor's. S' HENRICI DE TEIHEIS. 

LI. 

[ROGER LA WARR OF ISFIELD in Sussex was a captain of 
the forces in Gascony in 1295. He was at Caerlaverock, 
where the poet describes him as sage et preus. He died about 
1320. His seal is not attached to the letter.] 

LII. 

[JOHN RIVERS, LORD OF CASTLE ONGAR in Essex, succeeded 
his father in 1293 or 1294 and died in or about 1311. His 
seal is not attached to the letter.] 

LIII. 

JOHN OF LANCASTER, LORD OF GRISDALE in Barton, co. 
Westmorland, was son and heir of Roger of Lancaster, Lord of 
Rydal in Westmorland, who was a bastard brother of William 
of Lancaster, Lord of Kendal. He succeeded his father in 
1291 and died in 1334 without issue. 

SEAL. A shield of arms two bars with a quarter and a leopard on the quarter 
between three half fleurs de lys. S' IOHANNIS DE LONECASTER. 

LIV. 

ROBERT FITZ PAYNE, LORD OF LAMMER, succeeded his 
father, another Robert, in 1280, and was governor of Windsor 
Castle and steward of the king's household. He died in 
9 Edw. II. 

SEAL. The arms three lions passant with a baston in an oval with the in- 
scription round the edge. S' ROBERTI FIL' PAGANI. 

The seal remains only to the A copy of the letter. 



SEALS OF THE BARONS' LETTER 257 

LV. 

HENRY TREGOZ, LORD OF GORING in Sussex, was in the 
Scottish wars of Edward I. and Edward II. and was living in 
March, 132^. 

SEAL. A shield of arms two gimel bars with a leopard in the chief between 
two wyverns. 

LVI. 

[RALPH PIPARD, LORD OF LINFORD, and of Rotherfield 
Pipard in Oxfordshire, is said to have been a younger son of 
Ralph fitz Nicholas, steward of the household to Henry III. 
He was governor of the castles of Bolsover and Hareston, and 
died in 3 Edw. II. His seals is not attached to the letter.] 

LVII. 

WALTER DE FAUCONBERG, LORD OF FAUCONBERG, was of 
Skelton Castle in Cleveland, and succeeded his father in 1272. 
He died in 1304. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a fesse with three pales in the chief?- SIGILLVM 
WAL DE FAVCVNB'GE. This is the shield which the family 
afterwards abandoned for that of Brus of Skelton. 

LVIII. 

ROGER LE STRANGE OF ELLESMERE in Salop succeeded his 
brother Hamon le Strange at Ellesmere, being a son of Hamon 
le Strange of Ellesmere, a younger son of John le Strange of 
Knokyn. He died in 1311. 
SEAL. A shield of arms two lions passant with a border engrailed. 

LIX. 

JOHN LE STRANGE OF KNOK.YN in Shropshire succeeded 
his father, another John, in 4 Edw. I., being then aged twenty- 
two. He died in 3 Edw. II. 

SEAL. The knight galloping on horseback sword in hand, with the arms 
two Sons passant on shield and horse-trappers. Horse and rider have 
the fan crest. S' IOHANNIS LE 8TRAVNGGE. 

1 The B.M. catalogue of seals distinguishes itself by blazoning this simple 
shield as in chief a label of three points, inverted (?) ! 



258 THE ANCESTOR 

LX. 

THOMAS DE CHAWORTH, LORD OF NORTON in Derbyshire, 
called ' Thomas de Chaurces ' in the letter, was son and heir 
of William de Chaworth by Alice, coheir of her brother 
Robert Alfreton of Norton. He was of full age in 31 
Hen. III. 

SEAL. A shield of the arms of Alfreton two eheverons between two winged 
dragons or wyverns, with a couched lion at the foot. SIGILLVM 
THOME DE CHAWORTHE. 

This seal only remains to the B copy of the letter. 

LXI. 

WALTER DE BEAUCHAMP, LORD OF ALCESTER in Warwick- 
shire, was brother to William, the first Beauchamp Earl of 
Warwick. He bought the manor of Alcester in 56 Hen. III. 
of Reynold, son of Peter fitz Herbert. He was at Falkirk 
and Caerlaverock and died 31 Edw. I. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a fesse between six martlets with a leopard above it 
and two more at the sides. [S 1 W]ALTE[RI DE B]ELLO CAMPO 
D[E ]. 

COUNTERSEAL. A shield of the arms. S' WALT'I DE BELLO CAMPO. 

LXII. 

RICHARD TALBOT, LORD OF ECCLESWALL in Hereford, was 
son and heir of Gilbert Talbot, by the daughter and heir of 
Rhys ap Gruffydd, prince of south Wales. He was ancestor 
of the Earls of Shrewsbury, and died in 1306. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a lion and a border engrailed between two wyverns 
or dragons. RICARDVS TALEBOT. 

LXIII. 

JOHN BOTTETOURTE, LORD OF MENDESHAM, was admiral 
of the fleet of Edward I. He died in 1324. 

SEAL. A cinqfoil with each leaf bearing the arms a. saltire engrailed. 
S' IOHANNIS BOVTTOVRT. 

LXIV. 

[JOHN ENGAYNE, LORD OF COLUMB, was son and heir of 
John Engayne of Pytchley in Northants, and succeeded his 
father in 25 Edw. I. at the age of thirty. He died without 
issue in 16 Edw. II. His name appears in the letter, but 
seal is not attached.] 



62 





C'l \ 










SEALS OF THE BARONS' LETTER 259 

LXV. 

HUGH POYNTZ, LORD OF CURRY MALET in Somerset, suc- 
ceeded his father in I Edw. I., and served in the wars' in 
Wales, Gascony and Scotland. He died in i Edw. II. His 
seal is more probably that of his son and heir Nicholas than 
that of Nicholas his father. 

SEAL. A shield of arms tarry of eight piecei tvith a label (of five fxndanti) 
surmounted by a helm with the m crest. S' NICHOLAI POINZ. 

LXVI. 

ADAM OF WELLES, LORD OF WELLES in Lincolnshire, was 
born about 1276, and was at the siege of Caerlaverock. He 
died in 1311. 

SEAL. A shield of arms a Ron toith a forked tail. 8(IG]I[LL]VM D'[NI 
ADE] DE WELLE. 

COUNTERSEAL. A shield of the like arms between two wyverns or dragons. 
SIGILLVM ADE DE WELLE. 



(To be concluded.) 



260 THE ANCESTOR 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

THE VALUE OF WELSH PEDIGREES 
SIR 

It is a question obviously of wide interest to students of 
family history whether the long strings of names which repre- 
sent Welsh { pedigrees ' are or are not trustworthy. No 
apology, therefore, is needed for replying to Mr. H. J. T. 
Wood's latest paper on the subject. 1 

His 'great chart pedigree of Pryse,' 2 given as a specimen 
of these productions, showed us Sir Richard Pryse, living 
1588 and 1597, descended in the sixteenth generation from 
' Cynfyn Lord of Powys and Earl of Chester.' For this 
descent we were given only the usual string of names without 
a single date. It was consequently only by dead reckoning 
that one could form an idea of the date at which ' Cynfyn ' 
must have lived. As every competent genealogist must 
know, it is an excessive estimate to allow, during these cen- 
turies, an average of thirty years to the generation, especially 
where, as in this instance, three of the links are females. 
Nevertheless, I allowed the full thirty years, with the result 
that ' Cynfyn,' as I expressed it, 3 ' must have lived somewhere 
about the beginning of the twelfth century,' at which time, 
we know as a fact, there was no such Earl of Chester. 

Mr. Wood, however, returns to the charge, writing with 
great confidence : 

Mr. Round is unlucky in the illustration he adduces in support of his 
views, for, doubtless most unfortunately for himself, Cynfyn, Lord of Powys 
and Earl of Chester, instead of living somewhere about the beginning of the 
twelfth century, as Mr. Round says he must have done, died before 1070 (the 
date at which the first real Earl of Chester known to G.E.C. became so), un- 
less he managed to survive marriage with a widow fifty years.* 

I should have thought that Mr. Wood had had enough 
of rashly trying to convict me of error, 6 but, as he has not, 
I am compelled to point out that it is to himself and to his 
Welsh pedigrees that the date he now assigns to Cynfyn is 

1 Ancestor, vi. 62-5. 2 Ibid. iv. 56. 3 Ibid. v. 48. 

4 Ibid. vi. 65. B Ibid. v. 49-51. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 261 

' most unfortunate.' For, as I have explained above, the 
beginning of the twelfth century is the earliest possible date 
to which we can assign his existence consistently with the 
pedigree given by Mr. Wood. If, therefore, as we now 
gather, he lived early in the eleventh, it is the pedigree it- 
self that breaks down and is clearly not to be relied on. 
This will be clear to those who have sufficient experience of 
genealogy. 

Moreover, the history of Chester, as I need scarcely add, 
does not begin in 1070. In his study on 'the great earldoms 
under Eadward,' Mr. Freeman wrote : 

For any complete view of the general succession of the Earls we must go 
back to the fourfold division of England by Cnut in 1017. . . . Now in 
these four great governments we can trace the succession of Earls without 
difficulty with the single exception of East Anglia. . . . That the north- 
western shires of Mercia remained constantly under Leofric and his house 
there can be no reasonable doubt. 

It is shown by the text and the accompanying map that 
Cheshire was one of these ' north-western shires.' There is 
no room, it will be seen, for Cynfyn as Earl of Chester so far 
back as 1017, nor, for the matter of that, even earlier. In- 
stead, therefore, of showing that Cynfyn may actually have 
held that earldom, Mr. Wood has only succeeded in showing 
that his specimen Welsh pedigree will not hold water. 

With regard to the ' important critical principle ' (as Mr. 
Wood terms it) 'involved,' 1 his position, I observe, remains 
almost incredible. He persists in contending that the descrip- 
tion of Gerald by a contemporary historian and relative has 
only ' possibly a certain weight ' as ' confirmatory evidence ' of 
a herald's roll of the seventeenth and a Welsh compilation of 
the eighteenth century. That these latter ' are the proper 
authorities for the facts of the twelfth ' is, I must repeat, 
' delightfully subversive of all that the historian and the 
genealogist have now agreed to accept.' " 

J. HORACE ROUND. 



THE ENGLISH GENTLEMAN 
SIR 

I should like to contribute two notes on this subject. 

Sir George Sitwell states 3 that ' no one ever described 

1 Ancestor, vi. 63. 3 Ibid. v. 49. 3 Ibid. i. 65. 



262 THE ANCESTOR 

himself, or was described by others, as a gentleman before the 
year 1413 to be precise before September 29 in that year.' 
This date will have to be put a little further back. 

In a fragment of a Poll Tax return for the city of York 
in I379, 1 I find the following : 

De Ricardo del See, gentilman, iijy. 
De Henrico de Appilby, gentilman, xijV. 

Here, I think, is an instance of a man describing himself 
as a gentleman, though this view is perhaps not free from 
doubt. 

My second note is clearly a description by others. 

Writing from Conway to the Constable of Chester, on 
the Saturday after the Feast of the Epiphany, 5 Henry IV. 
(1404), Reynald de Bayldon, ' one of ye Keperz of Conowey,' 3 
thus expresses himself on the desire of the Welsh rebels to end 
the war : 

I have herde my selfe mony of ye gentilmen and of ye commyns of 
Meryonnythshire & of Caernervanshire swere y' almen of ye forsaede shirs, 
exepte fowre or five gentilmen & a fewe vacaboundis, woldin faene cum to 
pees. 3 

The contrast here, between gentleman on the one hand 
and commons and vagabonds on the other, leaves no doubt as 
to the meaning intended by the writer. 

In the same letter, Reynald uses the word yeoman in a 
military sense, thus confirming Sir George Sitwell's note (loc. 
cit.), that 'yeoman was a designation which at first expressed 
military rank.' 

W. PALEY BAILDON, F.S.A. 
LINCOLN'S INN. 

[Although the note from the Poll Tax is of the greatest interest, taking 
thirty-four years from Sir George Sitwell's date, it seems to us that it might 
more accurately be described as ' a description by others,' by the escheator to 
wit. We suggest that a like value cannot be attached to Raynald Bayldon's 
phrase. That the word ' gentleman ' is of greater antiquity than 1379 is 
hardly in dispute. What we seek is early evidence for its use as denoting 
a particular class immediately below the knight or squire. Reynald Bayldon's 
phrase, as it seems to us, may well be used in the older sense in which it 
includes all those above ' the commyns ' the nobility greater and less. ED.] 

1 P.R.O. Exchequer, Lay Subsidies, S T V 7 - 

3 He was joint keeper of Conway town, together with Hugh de Moreton. 
* Cotton MS. Cleopatra, F. III. fo. 39 ; printed by Ellis, Original Letters, 
jer. z, vol. i. letter 13. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 263 

To Master Barron at y 1 signe of f AUNCESTOR -withyn Whitehall 
Gardyns y* sadde petition of John Fyscher gent. 

WORTHIE SYR 

Whereas y' y* advertised withyn these realmes wherein 
Pluto and Proserpina doe keepe theyre courte that (with y* 
aid of certain colporteurs yclept Archibald Constable and hys 
companie (of which y latter y* I ween right merrie) thou dost 
impress upon thy leaues copies of such ancient letters of 
auncestors as may fall within thy hands : therefore do I send 
y* thys complaint. 

Your poore orator who with his bretheren Jhon and 
Rychard was born of free stock at Turuie in y* countie of 
Bedforde was there putte to learninge atte y* chauntrie school 
(synthe restored unto goode estate atte y* behest of Syr Jhon 
Mordaunte knyghte on whose soule Jesu haue mercie and 
take from these partes wher he yet y*) I say your poore orator 
toke to wyff oon Rose a certayne gentilwoman of spirit (well 
skilled in huswiffry) and did live with hyr in goode estate ypon 
hys faders lands atte Pauenham neer Turuie (y* which are by 
report stil calde Fyschers albeit parte thereof were passed 
away l to y e said Syr Jhon Mordaunte and by hym given 3 to 
hys schoole). May y 1 also pleas you to learn that my elder 
broder (who like unto myself was chrystened Jhon y* better to 
cause y e name w** was that of our fader to remaine in remem- 
braunce) did enter y* ynnes of courte and become serieaunt 
unto y e kynges highness as well as a iustice of y" Bench : and 
hee dying in y 8 yere of our lord god m.v'TC did deuise s all hys 
great estates (y e which hee hadde gotten with much labor and 
y* aide of hys goode friend Mastyr Edmund Dudlie y* kynges 
judge fiscal) ynto Syr Michael Fyscher hys sonne knyghte and 
hys heirs : with a remainder ynto mee y" s d Jhon Fyscher of 
Pauenham hys broder. 

And I waxing olde (as y* a way of alle fleshe) dyed in y* 
yere m.vxviij and my body was brought to yrth in y" chappel 
of Sainte Nycholas (y* patrone of my forebears ynto whome 
and all y 8 holie companie of heven I do crye for succour) : and 

1 Feet of Fines, Beds, 39 H. 6. Will, and John Mordaunt quer. with 

Will. Fisher and others deforc. lands in Turvey. 

P.C.C. Wills, 1504. (22, Holgrave). The will of Sir John Mordaunt, 
knt. 

3 Ibid. 1510 (29, Bennet). The will of Sir John Fisher, knt. 



264 THE ANCESTOR 

for my goodes they were diuided according unto my wyll l by 
y e said Syr Michael Fyscher y e superuisor thereof between 
Rose my comfortable wyff and our quick children : and my 
best beste for my mortuarie after y e custom of y e toune of 
Pauenham and as for my soule (for whose healthe I did not 
furder prouide) y' passed ynto y* realme calde purgotorie 
whence (with y* aide of goode Sainte Nycholas and hys broder 
fyscher Sainte peter of warlike memorie) y l hadde long since 
coome ynto paradyse with y e holy saintes but for y e mishap 
which befell ypon y' : which I wylle here sett forthe. 

Ther dwelt in y* towne of Buntyngforde oon Jhon Fysher 
a chapman of mean estate : who as well as hys patrimonie 
(w 011 hee had from his fader Thorns. Fyscher who long synthe 
in y e time of good kyng harry of munmouth purchased 2 hys 
dwelling house ther from Jhon Speruer and others) did by y e 
gaine of hys trade add 3 unto y e same other londes : that y 5 to 
weet a messuage in Layston which hee had from Thorns. 
Allyne. He toke to wyff oon Agnes and dying some thre 
yers after your deponent did by wyll * deuise all his propertie 
ynto hyr with remainder ynto y e fruite of hyr bodie in tail 
male (as y e saying y 5 of learned clerks) : of whom in y e fourthe 
generacion was oon Eddard Fyscher who was a limb of y e 
honourable societie of y e inner temple dwellyng atte Southende 
hall : he was y e sonne of oon Eddard Fyscher and Anne y e 
doughter of Thorns. Saunders of Oxfordsheer. 

Unto whom in y e yer of our lord m.vi c xxxiv did come 
oon B Jhon Filpot y'clept Somerset an harald painter and Will. 
Ryley alias blew mantel hys frend and did (as your orator 
showeth) most unkindly confirm 6 ynto y e said Eddard Fyscher 
of Southende y e armes of Syr Jhon Fyscher knyght : to weet 
Sylver on a chevron gules between thre half lyons as many 

1 Archdeaconry of Beds, Wills, 1518. The will of John Fisher of 
Pavenham. 

2 Exchequer Deeds of the Queen's Remembrancer D. 570 and 586. 
Dated 4 H. 5. Release and demise to Thomas Fisher and others. 

3 Chit Roll, 17 H. 7, pt. i, No. 52. Thomas Allyne and others with 
John Fisher, chapman lands, etc. in Layston. 

4 P.C.C. Wills, 1521 (zo-i, Maynwaring). The wills of John Fisher of 
Layston, and his son Thomas Fisher of Buntingford. 

8 Harktan Society's Publications, xiii. 568. The pedigree of Edward Fisher 
of Southend Hall, barrister-at-law. 

8 Ibid. The descent is given from Sir John Fisher's brother, but the 
arms are differenced with a bordure bezanty. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 265 

golde peices : * and did untruely auer that y" auncestor of 
Eddard Fyscher (who in realitie was y* said Jhon Fysher who 
dyed at Buntyngforde a m.v'Tcxj) was y 6 broder or Syr Jhon 
Fyscher knyghte : to y greate riurte of me your said orator 
who was in uerie truth y e saide broder of Syr Jhon. 

And whereas (as y* well knoune ynto all gentilmen) y* is 
not lawful either ypon yrth or y n heven to challenge or make 
denial of anie recorde of y" college of armes * (y 8 which com- 
mandment Syr Georg Sittewel raise knyghte barronette shal 
hereafter rue) : may y' pleas your worthiness to learn y* (by 
reason of y 8 fabulous testimonie of y* saide Somerset and blew 
mantel) y 1 is nowe by common reporte accepted that your poore 
bedeman did not onlie dwell at Pauenham with Rose his lawful 
wyff but did also wed in y* towne of Buntyngforde with y" 
saide Agnes : and did ypon her bodie (to y* greate hurt of y 6 
saide Rose : with which injurie she doth still both night and 
daye reproach mee) beget all those foure sonnes y*clept Thomas 
Jhon Rycharde and Xpofer Fysher and their two system. 

Moreover that holie Sainte : peter (of warlike memorie) 
waxing wroth with your deponent hath acted ypon thes eui- 
dences (which hee styleth official and which maye not be con- 
tradicted euen by him that keepeth y* keys of purgatorie) and 
hath therefor thrust your poore bedeman ynto thes realmes of 
outer darkness : who being thus yndone desireth you good 
Master Barren and all Xtian men of your charitie to intercede 
for hym : on whose soule Garter kynge atte armes and all y" 
holie companie of y* strete of Queen Victoria (that ladye of 
pious memorie) haue mercie. 

Y or poore peticioner 

JHON FYSHER of Pauenham gent 
alias dictus (per lie. Somerset et blewmantle) 

JHON FYSHER of Buntyngforde adult'er 



[NoTE. The Editor having reason to regard this communication with 
some mistrust, a correspondent has been to great pains to verify these assertions 
of the much wronged John, and several references are appended that appear to 
substantiate his grievance.] 



1 Metcalfe's Book of Knights. 

1 Bedfirdshite Notes and Queries, vol. i. Francis Thynne, Lancaster, here 
gives the arms on the Clifton monument as : Argent, on a chevron, between 
three demi-lions rampant gules, as many plates. They are now obliterated. 



266 THE ANCESTOR 

BARONIES BY WRIT 

SIR, 

In the Ancestor, ii. 243, reference is made to the baronies 
of Fauconberg, Darcy (de Knayth) and Meinill. The claims 
in these cases have been decided in favour of the Countess of 
Yarborough and Powis. 

It appears that these peerages were created by writ of 
summons, and by virtue of which females succeed on failure 
of males. 

I wish to ask if such baronies fall exclusively in the line of 
descendants of the male heir in whom they were created, and 
if there is any rule or custom excluding a male heir in a 
collateral line say the line of the brother of the original 
baron. In other words whether a male descendant of a junior 
branch comes after a female descendant of the senior branch. 
It is stated by some that modern peerages are as a rule in 
tail male, whereas ancient ones were not usually so. Is this 
correct, and is it applicable to peerages by patent or by writ ? 

What would be the formula for creating such peerages, or 
at least the differentiating phrases ? As there is probably 
considerable ignorance on these points it will be useful to have 
the opinion of experts thereon. 

Yours faithfully, 

F. D. THOMPSON. 

22 BLENHEIM TERRACE, LEEDS. 

[Baronies created by writ of summons descend to the ' heir general ' of 
the party summoned by the writ, and in no case to his collateral descendants. 
Our recent article on the Brays of Shere illustrates this. Baronies created by 
letters-patent descend according the ' limitation ' expressed in them, which is 
usually to the heirs-male of the body of the grantee. ED.] 

JOHN JOHNSTON 
SIR, 

May I, as a subscriber to the Ancestor, ask your and your 
readers' help in the following matter ? 

The John Johnston about whose career I would inquire 
was born on 3 September, 1665, and was a younger son of 
James Johnston, first Earl of Annandale. He entered the 
army, but subsequently devoted himself to the cause of the 
exiled James II., serving after that monarch's death the 
interests of his son the Chevalier de St. George. The late Sir 
William Fraser in his Family Book of the Johnstons briefly 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 267 

dismisses John Johnston with the remark that he died without 
lawful issue. Sir William failed to give any sketch of his 
career, nor was he able apparently to give the date or place of 
his death. Some information regarding John Johnston is 
obtainable in the correspondence of the Jacobite agent, 
Colonel Hooke, and in a recently published volume of the 
Historical MSS. Commission entitled Stuart Papers (vol. i.). 
It appears from these authorities that he died of a fever in 
1715, but the place of his death is not given. If the editor 
of the Ancestor or any of the readers of that magazine can 
give me any facts regarding his life and fate I shall be much 
indebted to them for the information. 

Yours faithfully, 

F. A. JOHNSTON. 
1 6 DRAYCOTT PLACE, S.W. 

SIR, 

I have read your long criticism of my little pamphlet on 
Heralds College and Coats of Arms with some interest and I may 
add with much amusement. It is a matter of supreme in- 
difference to me whether or no you consider my opinions to 
be folly and myself to be ignorant of the subject, or whether 
you trail red herrings across the scent, as virtually you do, 
when you discuss (Ancestor, v. 224) my use of the phrase obiter 
dictum. 

But when you say that knowing the impossibility of sus- 
taining the main contention of my tract I have preferred to 
talk round my subject, it is time to protest against such latter- 
day criticism. Such a statement is in plain words a charge of 
mala fides, and ought not to be made unless you have sure 
ground for the belief that a writer is deliberately misleading 
his readers. The views I hold as to what are ' lawful ' arms 
may be wrong. The arguments I use may be weak and I 
may be ignorant of heraldry. These opinions are also held 
by the King's Officers of Arms. They are supported by 
decisions of His Majesty's judges. What I strongly object 
to in your criticism is the assertion that I make use of these 
arguments knowing the impossibility of proving my case. It 
is not fair criticism. 

I am, yours faithfully, 

W. P. W. PHILLIMORE. 
124 CHANCERY LANE. 



268 THE ANCESTOR 

[Mr. Philliraore returns with unhappy persistence to the obiter dictum of 
Sir William Dugdale. As often as he does so, so often must we remind our 
readers of the origin of this difficulty. We published in a former volume of 
the Ancestor a letter of Sir William Dugdale's in which that famous herald 
informed his correspondent of the procedure of the heralds in certain cases, 
adding that this procedure was based upon the instructions given them. Mr. 
Phillimore, who wished to waive aside the evidence of Sir William Dug- 
dale upon this point, spoke of the letter as an obiter dictum, and we felt bound 
to say that in applying these words to a letter written by an official and re- 
lating, in answer to a question upon a specific point, the nature of his official 
instructions, Mr. Phillimore did not attach the same value as ourselves to the 
phrase obiter dictum. We should be disposed to deny that our protest was the 
' virtual trailing of a red herring,' but the phrase of the trailing of a red herring 
may have another value with Mr. Phillimore. 

It will be seen from Mr. Phillimore's letter that the arguments which 
challenge the contentions of his pamphlet are, as he would say, ' a matter of 
supreme indifference ' to him. The readers to whom he commends that 
pamphlet will, however, draw their own conclusions from the manner in 
which he has chosen to meet those arguments. 

We appeal to our article as a whole when we say that Mr. Phillimore was 
treated therein with every courtesy due to an honourable opponent. Our 
ironical suggestion that he himself must recognize the impossibility of sus- 
taining his main argument will not persuade anyone that we were charging 
Mr. Phillimore with mala fides or dishonourable conduct. Controversy would 
be impossible if its commonplaces were thus to be magnified and misinter- 
preted, and we do not hesitate to say that to our mind the scent of the red 
herring is wafted with the indignation which keeps Mr. Phillimore from 
meeting criticism. We are full of regret that a misunderstood phrase should 
have annoyed Mr. Phillimore, but we have nothing to withdraw. If we 
were disposed to quarrel over phrases we might ourselves object to Mr. Philli- 
more's new advertisement of his pamphlet, whose spiked artillery is still, as it 
seems, pointed against the supporters of ' bogus heraldry.' What ' bogus 
heraldry ' may be in Mr. Phillimore's mind we are unable to say, but we 
would indicate a possible example in our article on the ' English Counts of 
the Empire ' in this current Ancestor. If Mr. Phillimore having examined 
the shield used by the family of ' St." Paul pronounces it aught but ' bogus,' 
we declare ourselves ready to accuse him of mala fides or of any kindred sinful- 
ness he may put into our mouths. 

In our article we protested against the habit of dragging in the names of 
existing officers of arms as assenting parties to obsolescent abuses. Mr. Philli- 
more repeats the offence. He has, so far as we are aware, no commission to 
speak on behalf of the officers of arms as a body, and we dislike this attempt 
to represent them as holding opinions whose weakness Mr. Phillimore half 
admits. ED.] 



EDITORIAL NOTES 

AN evening journal, in the course of a notice of the 
Ancestor, has words which draw from us yet another 
declaration of our editorial policy. Our controversies con- 
cerning the subjects dealt with by the Ancestor and our criticism 
of our fellows is, as we are warned, ' a petty strife,' and we are 
further admonished that ' it is a mean man's business to prove 
others wrong,' and above all to prove them so with 'clumsy 

pleasantries. 

* * * 

At the outset we made as we thought our position amongst 
reviews tolerably clear. We come to insist upon the worthi- 
ness and dignity of the side of archaeology with which we 
deal, as a work without which history itself cannot live. We 
find a noble study which asks for the best energy of scholars 
still esteemed a pastime for the elderly and incompetent. 
The believer in the flatness of the earth does not find his 
work seriously discussed amongst geographers ; the enthusiast 
who traces the English race down many-coloured charts from 
the lost tribes of Israel is not received as a brother by the 
ethnological societies. But popular archaeology has been 
allowed to flourish freely on southern slopes where never 
wind blows loudly. Any picture-book maker, any compiler ot 
stodged misapprehensions from other men's work, has his 
welcome awaiting him at the hands of the critic. Did these 
mild conditions exist in other branches of literature, we might 
see Mr. Wells's ' Anticipations ' and the dismal auguries ot 
the Prophet Baxter reviewed in double harness. At the 
Ancestor 3 beginning we noticed a popular folio upon the 
ancient rolls of arms, put together for an indulgent public by 
an author whose ignorance of French was no bar to his 
editing documents in that tongue. A dozen reviews urged 
* every student ' to the purchase of his books. One of the 
most trumpery and misleading works upon English surnames 
has lately reappeared in a second edition, and a reviewer 
writing in one of the principal journals of archaeology is not 
ashamed to say that it ' may be confidently recommended as 



a/o THE ANCESTOR 

invaluable to genealogists and of the greatest interest to 

students in general.' 

* * * 

Small wonder that poor Mr. Hitchin-Kemp writes to us 
bitterly resenting our late review of his history of the Kemp 
families. That he understood neither the language nor the 
handwriting of the ancient documents of which he treated has 
not disqualified him in the opinion of other critics for his task. 

* * * 

It is part of the business of the Ancestor to let the wind 
into this sealed garden, and so long as the constructive side 
of our work keeps pace with the destructive we shall not hold 
it to be mean or unworthy. As useful a day's work may be 
done in pulling docks as in sowing beans. For the rest, by 
the leave of our critics, we shall sentence folly without putting 
on our black cap. 

* * * 

The growing interest in archaeology is making itself felt 
amongst politicians. The Unionist candidate for the St. 
Andrews Burghs is being commended to his constituents by 
the many historical curiosities which he has gathered together 
in his * picturesque home ' in Fifeshire. Chief amongst these 
precious trifles we should place ' the red hat worn by the 
Cardinal Duke of York, brother of Charles II.' The journals 
call it ' a treasured curio,' but that is to say little. Lord 
Macaulay might have been less restrained could he have been 
vouchsafed a sight of a relic which more than aught else 
would have explained the ecclesiastical bias of the Duke of 
York, brother of Charles II. (and afterwards king of these 

islands). 

* 

We print in this number the Rev. F. W. Ragg's trans- 
lation of and annotations on a charter of Gospatrik which 
he discovered among the muniments at Lowther last autumn. 
We understand that Mr. Ragg has now devoted two of his 
annual holidays to working on the early documents in the 
Lowther collection for the advantage of the histories of 
Cumberland and Westmorland in the Victoria series of county 
histories. Mr. Ragg's discriminating eye has rescued a treasure 
from oblivion, and the world of scholars is greatly indebted to 
him and to the custodians of the muniments at Lowther who 



EDITORIAL NOTES 



271 



at Mr. Ragg's earnest solicitation had the document photo- 
graphed. This charter also forms the subject of an article 
by the Rev. James Wilson in the first number of our new 
contemporary the Scottish Historical Review. Mr. Wilson, as 
local editor of the Victoria History of Cumberland^ has of course 
a special interest in Mr. Ragg's happy find. 

* * 

The interesting claim to the baronies of Fauconberg, 
Darcy (de Knayth) and Meinill has been decided since our 
last number appeared. Fauconberg was claimed as a barony 
created in 1283, and three points were keenly contested. In 
the first place there was no actual proof that any of the 
original lords Fauconberg had ever ' sat,' and it was endea- 
voured, on behalf of the claimants, to go outside the recog- 
nized mode of proof and use for the purpose ' the Barons' 
letter to the Pope,' which is now being illustrated in our 
pages. Failing this, it was claimed that the admitted proof 
of sitting of the Nevill who was summoned as Lord Fau- 
conberg under Henry was proof that his wife's ancestors 
had sat, she being the heiress of the original lords Faucon- 
berg. Thirdly, it was claimed that if a barony was found 
to have been held by those lords Fauconberg, it ought to 
be allowed the high precedence of 1283 (i i Edw. I.), although 
it is generally considered that the writ of 1295 is the first 

valid one. 

* * * 

All three of these points, it will be seen, might have a bear- 
ing on other claims, and although the writ of 1 1 Edward seems 
to have been accepted in the Mowbray case, this was done 
inadvertently without any debate on the question. Its admis- 
sion in the Fauconberg claim would have had the practical 
effect of further complicating an already very difficult question 
of precedence, and would, moreover, have been historically 
wrong. The Committee for Privileges' decision that the 
barony could only be claimed under the writ of Henry VI. 
must be taken to indicate that the evidence of sitting by the 
previous lords was insufficient, and that proof of sitting must 
still be adduced in that formal manner which acts as a bar to 
several possible claims. 

* * 

A very surprising argument was advanced on behalf of the 



272 THE ANCESTOR 

claimants as to the Meinill barony, namely, that it was not for 
them to prove that their ancestor had sat under the writ ad- 
dressed to him, but for the Crown to show that he could not 
have done so ! The claim to this barony was in every way a 
weak one, and was, as might have been expected, unsuccessful. 
The Darcy claim was allowed in spite of an admitted difficulty 
in the action of the Crown, under Charles I., with regard 
to this title. The finding of the Committee, however, did 
no more than establish the fact that Lady Yarborough and 
Lady Powis were co-heirs to the baronies claimed, which 
only the pleasure of the Sovereign could call out of abey- 
ance. 

* * * 

As we go to press, the third volume of G. E. C.'s Com- 
plete Baronetage makes its appearance. The period covered 
by this volume, 164964, is one of peculiar interest and diffi- 
culty for the creations of baronetcies, and the editor has de- 
voted special attention to those created by Cromwell, as to 
the number of which there has been some confusion. Dug- 
dale's Catalogue of the Baronets of this Kingdom of England 
(1681) has been made much use of, and its compilation is one 
of those useful works for which we have to thank the great 
Garter King. While the burning but perennial question of 
the wrongful assumption of baronetcies still awaits solution, 
G. E. C. boldly grasps the nettle and surrounds with his 
favourite mourning border those who, in his opinion, have 
merely usurped the tide. It is a pleasure to congratulate 
the indefatigable editor on the accomplishment of another 
substantial instalment of his heavy task, the more so as he 
is always eager to acknowledge the assistance, however slight, 
of others. We note in the present volume a reference to 

our own pages. 

* * * 

The attention of those antiquaries who are genealogists 
may be called to the excellent work which is being done by 
Messrs. John Matthews and George F. Matthews in their 
publication of Tear Books of Probates. The backbone of 
English pedigree making is the series of wills registered in 
the prerogative court of Canterbury, for without search in 
the records of this court no family history can hope to com- 
plete itself. But in working upon these records the student 
is vexed and hampered by want of proper indices. The 



EDITORIAL NOTES 273 

official calendars in use are ancient, foul and unwieldy, and 
the authorities are in no haste to replace them. For the 
period before the reign of Elizabeth Mr. Challenor Smith, a 
former chief of the department for literary inquiry, compiled 
the elaborately accurate calendar well known to grateful 
literary inquirers. But such industry being, as it were, dis- 
pleasing to the higher authorities, this calendar had no official 
recognition and was printed and issued by private enterprise. 
Since then the British Record Society has slowly carried for- 
ward Mr. Smith's work to the beginning of the seventeenth 
century. 

* * 

Beginning with the year 1630, the Messrs. Matthews 
have placed themselves well ahead of the work of the British 
Record Society, and are issuing not only a calendar of wills 
but also notes which contain a full abstract of the material, 
often valuable, supplied by the probate acts. Already they 
have published five year books with the entries arranged 
lexicographically and with an excellent index of the names 
other than those of testators which occur in the acts. That 
they may hurry forward with their work is much to be de- 
sired, but it is not improbable that the Messrs. Matthews 
are helping the English genealogist at their own proper cost. 
Those who desire to aid in the work may be reminded that 
the subscription asked for is only a yearly guinea, which 
should be forwarded to Mr. John Matthews at 93 Chancery 
Lane, W.C. The only criticism of this first volume which 
we can offer is the suggestion that its handiness would have 
been increased had the five years contained in it been pooled 
in one calendar instead of five. 



Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. 



THE PASTON LETTERS 

Edited by JAMES GAIRDNER 

Of the Public Record Office 
4 vo/s., 2 is, net 

THE FOURTH VOLUME CONTAINING THE INTRODUCTION AND 
SUPPLEMENT MAY BE PURCHASED SEPARATELY 

Price i CM. 6d. net 

These Letters are the genuine correspondence of a family in 
Norfolk during the Wars of the Roses. As such they are altogether 
unique in character ; yet the language is not so antiquated as to present 
any serious difficulty to the modern reader. The topics of the letters 
relate partly to the private affairs of the family, and partly to the 
stirring events of the time ; and the correspondence includes State 
papers, love-letters, bailifiV accounts, sentimental poems, jocular epistles, 
etc. 

Besides the public news of the day, such as the loss of Normandy 
by the English ; the indictment and subsequent murder at sea of the 
Duke of Suffolk ; and all the fluctuations of the great struggle of York 
and Lancaster ; we have the story of John Paston's first introduction 
to his wife ; incidental notices of severe domestic discipline, in which 
his sister frequently had her head broken ; letters from Dame Elizabeth 
Brews, a match-making mamma, who reminds the youngest John 
Paston that Friday is ' St. Valentine's Day,' and invites him to come 
and visit her family from the Thursday evening till the Monday, etc., 
etc. 

Every letter has been exhaustively annotated ; and a Chronological 
Table, with most copious Indices, conclude the Work. 

HENRT HALLAM, Introduction n the Uttrtturt of Europe, i. 128. J. 1837 : Tbt 
Paston Letttrs are an important teitimony to the progressive condition of Society, and come in 
at a precious link in the chain of moral history of England which they alone in thii period 
supply. They itand, indeed, singly, as far as I know, in Europe ; for though it is highly 
probable that in the archives of Italian families, if not in France or Germany, a series of 
merely private letters equally ancient may be concealed ; I do not recollect that any have 
been published. They are all written in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., except a 
few that extend as far as Henry VII., by different members of a wealthy and respectable, but 
not noble, family ; and are, therefore, pictures of the life of the English gentry of that age.' 

THE MORNINGJ>OST : ' A reprint of Mr. James Gardner's edition of Tbi Puna 
Letters with some fresh matter, including a new introduction. Originally published in 
1872-75, it was reprinted in 189;, and is now again reproduced. The introductions have 
been reset in larger type, and joined together in one, conveniently broken here and there by 
fresh headings. The preface is practically a new one. ... It is highly satisfactory for 
readers who care about history, social or political, to have this well-printed and admirably 
introduced and annotated edition of these famous letters.' 

MANCHESTER GUARDIAN : ' One of the monuments of English historical scholar- 
ship that needs no commendation.' 

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE Gf CO LTD 
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The Stall Plates of the Knights of 
the Order of the Garter 1348-1485 

Consisting of a Series of 9 1 Full-sized Coloured Facsimiles 
with Descriptive Notes and Historical Introductions by 

W. H. ST. JOHN HOPE, M.A., F.S.A. 

Dedicated by gracious privilege during her lifetime to HER 
LATE MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA, SOVEREIGN OF THE 
MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER. 

The edition is strictly limited and only 500 copies of the work 
have been printed. 

The object of the work is to illustrate the whole of the 
earlier Stall Plates, being the remaining memorials of the four- 
teenth and fifteenth century of Knights elected under the 
Plantagenet Sovereigns from Edward the Third, Founder of 
the Order, to Richard the Third, inclusive, together with three 
palimpsest plates and one of later date. 

The Stall Plates are represented full-size and in colours on 
Japan vellum, in exact facsimile of the originals, in the highest 
style of chromolithography, from photographs of the plates 
themselves. 

Each plate is accompanied by descriptive and explanatory 
notes, and the original and general characteristics of the Stall 
Plates are fully dealt with in an historical introduction. 

There are also included numerous seals of the Knights, repro- 
duced by photography from casts specially taken for this work. 

The work may be obtained bound in half leather, gilt, 
price 6 net ; or the plates and sheets loose in a portfolio, 
5 los. net ; or without binding or portfolio, 5 net. 

4THENJEUM : ' It is pleasant to welcome the first part of a long 
promised and most important heraldic work, and to find nothing to say of it 
which is not commendatory. The present part contains ten coloured facsimiles 
out of the ninety plates which the work will include when completed. They 
reflect the greatest credit on all concerned in their production.' 

MORNING POST : ' There is a fine field for antiquarian research in the 
splendid collection of heraldic plates attached to the stalls in the choir of St. 
George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and it will be a matter of satisfaction to all 
who are interested in old memorials that Mr. W. H. St. John Hope has given 
close examination to these ancient insignia and now presents the results of his 
investigations, with many reproductions.' 

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ENGLISH CORONATION 
RECORDS 

Edited by 

LEOPOLD G. WICKHAM LEGG, B.A. 
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD 

Imperial 8vo 
Edition limited to 500 copies of which only a few remain 

Price 31*. 6d. net 

This work is an attempt to illustrate the history of the 
coronation of the Sovereigns of England from the earliest 
times to the present. Twenty-nine documents have been 
collected ; and, so far as possible, the transcripts have been 
made from contemporary manuscripts. 

A translation has been added to the Latin and Anglo- 
French documents. 

Mr. W. H. St. John Hope has written a note on the 
* Cap of Maintenance,' in which he has described the history 
and manner of the investiture of peers. 

The whole work constitutes a full collection of coronation 
precedents. 

The illustrations include a reproduction in colours of the 
picture of an English coronation at Corpus Christi College, 
Cambridge, and a photogravure of the coronation of St. 
Edmund in a manuscript belonging to Captain Holford ; and 
also reproductions in collotype from the manuscript life of 
St. Edward in the University Library at Cambridge. The 
Crown of Queen Edith, which is represented from a portrait 
of Queen Henrietta Maria in the National Portrait Gallery, 
has not, it is thought, been noticed before. A feature of the 
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from the block cut for the late Sir Gilbert Scott's Gleanings 
from Westminster Abbey ; and there are also three plates show- 
ing the coronation robes of Queen Victoria. 

A^HENMVM. : Among the minor compensations for the prolonged delajr incident to 
a modern act of crowning is the time that it affords for the production of such an important 
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the question of English coronations from that of Aidan in the sixth century to that of Victoria 
thirteen centuries later.' 

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THE 

HOUSE OF PERCY 

BY GERALD BRENAN 

With numerous Illustrations, and an Introduc- 
tion by THE EDITOR 

Dedicated by Permission to 
His GRACE THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND 

2 vols. large 8vo, price i is. net 

EDITION DE LUXE 

Also a Large Paper Edition limited to 150 copies 

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The following is a list of some of the Illustrations included in 
' The House of Percy ' : 

Alnwick Castle, Bamborough Castle, from drawing by 
Herbert Railton. Portrait of Henry Percy, ist Earl of 
Northumberland the ' Earl Percie ' of Chevy Chase (repro- 
duced in colours from a contemporary MS.). Portrait of 
Henry, yth Earl of Northumberland. The Village of Perci in 
Normandy : the cradle of the race. Syon House, Northum- 
berland House, from drawings by Herbert Railton. The full 
armorial bearings of the present Duke of Northumberland in 
colours. Various shields, signatures, tnd facsimile letters. 

NEWCASTLE LEADER : ' The history is admirably illustrated 
with clever drawings by Herbert Railton, elaborate reproductions of 
the arms, crests, escutcheons, and pedigrees of the Percy family and 
its branches. Of course Alnwick Castle comes in for special treat- 
ment, and Mr. Railton is at his best in his sketches of that famous 
fortress-residence.' 

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THE 

HOUSE OF DOUGLAS 

By the Right Hon. 

SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BART. 

2 vols. large 8vo, price i u. net 

EDITION DE LUXE 

Also a Large Paper Edition limited to 150 copies 
^3 3 s - net 

The following is a list of some of the Illustrations in The 
House of Douglas ' : 

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS Tomb of Sir James Douglas 
in St. Bride's. Arms of Douglas and Moray from Bothwell 
Castle. Tomb of Margaret, Countess of Douglas, in 
Lincluden. Arms of the Douglas Family in Lincluden 
College. Tomb of James ' the Gross,' yth Earl of Douglas, 
in St. Bride's (two plates). Tantallon Castle. Morton Castle. 
Thrieve Castle. Tomb of the i st Earl and Countess of Morton 
in Dalkeith Church. Portrait of the 6th Earl of Angus, from 
the Tudor Portraits in Westminster Palace, painted from a 
picture in Windsor Castle. Portrait of the I3th Earl of 
Home, photo from portrait. Portrait of Lady Margaret 
Douglas. Hermitage Castle. James, Earl of Morton (litho- 
graphed from an original drawing). 
Also various Coats of Arms in colours, and numerous Seals and Signatures. 

THE TIMES : ' No more suitable beginning for the series could 
have been found. ... A valuable and important contribution to 
Scottish History. Brightly written . . . judgments wise and sane 
. . . narrative smooth and vigorous . . . powers of description un- 
questionable. A real addition to an important and interesting subject.' 

ATHENdEUM : 'The author has executed his task clearly and 
well. . . . Numerous and well-executed shields of arms, etc. A 
valuable work of reference, well printed. The author has the gift of 
an easy narrative style.' 

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The first English ^Translation of Chateaubriand' 's famous 
Autobiography ' Mtmoires d ' Outre tombe ' 

THE 

POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS 
OF FRANCOIS RENE 

VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND 

Sometime Ambassador 
to England 

Translated by ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS 

With 44 Illustrations from Contemporary Sources 
In 6 vols. Purple cloth, gilt top, price 4 los. net 

DR. WILLIAM BARRY in the BooAman : ' Mr. de Mattos has seen a rare 
chance, and has taken it boldly. . . . These " Memoirs from Beyond 
the Tomb " are certainly unploughed land, inviolate as some Greek Temple 
enclosure or, to put the matter more temptingly, if half a dozen books over- 
flowing with incidents, reflections, descriptions of persons and landscapes ; 
picturesque, irritating, curious, and brilliant, equal to these, were flung upon 
the circulating libraries, someone would make his fortune. Let us hope it will 
be Mr. de Mattos.' 

MR. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, K.C., M.P., in the Westminster Gazette : ' This 
excellent translation." 

Pall Mall Gazette : ' There is reason to congratulate Mr. de Mattos on the 
grace and fluency of his translation, and on the careful accuracy of his 
numerous footnotes.' 

Times : ' Mr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos's excellent rendering ot 
Chateaubriand's Memoires d'Outre-tembe.' 

Observer : ' Mr. A. Teixeira de Mattos is to be congratulated upon this 
first instalment of a remarkable achievement. ... A worthy translation. . . . 
So admirable an English version as is given by the zeal and talent of Mr. de 
Mattos.' 

Daily Telegraph : ' A valuable and scholarly translation . . . elucidated 
by concise and sufficient footnotes wherever necessary.' 

Tablet : ' Both translator and publisher have performed their task well. . . . 
Mr. de Mattos set himself to make a conscientiously correct and respectful 
translation of a great original, and he has given us so excellent a rendering, so 
adequately and beautifully produced and illustrated by the publishers, that we 
await the remaining volumes with the greatest interest.' 

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ANNO UNCEMEN T 

The History of the King's Bodyguard 
of the Yeomen of the Guard 

Instituted by King Henry VII. in the Year 1485 under the title of 
'Valecti Garde Corporis Nostri' 

DEDICATED BY SPECIAL PERMISSION TO 

His MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY KING EDWARD VII. 

OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, AND OF THE BRITISH 

DOMINIONS BBYOND THE SEAS, DEFENDER OF 

THE FAITH, EMPEROR OF INDIA, ETC 

BY 

COLONEL SIR REGINALD HENNEL, KT., D.S.O. 

LIEUTENANT THE ICING'S BODYGUARD OF THE 
YEOMEN OF THE GUARD 

The Edition, which will contain some seventy coloured plates, 
photogravures, collotype plates, etc., will be strictly limited to 300 
copies for sale and 1 5 copies for presentation. The names of sub- 
scribers before going to press will be printed in the volume. The 
price of the volume will be 3 31. net to subscribers before publication, 
after which the right is reserved to raise the price. 
The History will consist of : 

I. Brief account of the Bodyguards of the Kings of England 

from Canute to Richard III. 

II. Creation of the ' Yeomen of the Guard ' by Henry VII. on 
or about the 22nd August, 1485. 

III. The Guard's first title, its first establishment, the first 

Captain and Officers, its original dress, weapons, pay, and 
duties. 

IV. History of the Guard at Home and Abroad for 418 years, 

with detailed accounts of the Battles and Sieges at which 
it has been present, and the principal Historical Events in 
which it has taken part. 
V. Historical Roll of the Officers 1485 to 1903, and many 

Muster Rolls of the Yeomen at great ceremonies. 
These Historical Rolls give the dates of appointment verified from 
the actual Warrants in the State Records, and show that upwards of 
200 of our oldest families have had ancestors amongst the Officers, 
many of whom are renowned in English History. 

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The Church Plate of the 
County of Hereford 



BY 



THE HON. BERKELEY L. SCUDAMORE STANHOPE, M.A. 

ARCHDEACON OF HEREFORD, AND HAROLD 

C. MOFFATT, M.A. 

Demy ^to. Illustrated. Price 31^. 6d. net 
Edition limited to 250 copies 

This volume is published with the view to furnishing a 
record of the Communion Vessels belonging to each Church, 
or Mission Church, in the County of Hereford, including one 
or two private Chapels. Similar works have already been 
published for several Counties, while in other Counties pro- 
gress is being made with such inventories. 

The size of the book is Demy-Quarto, bound in buckram, 
with 17 photogravure plates, and 9 half-tone plates from 
photographs and pen and ink drawings. The illustrations 
have been prepared by Messrs. T. & R. Annan and Sons, of 
Glasgow. The Parishes are alphabetically arranged for easy 
reference, and the name of the Parish is printed under the 
vessel pictured in each illustration. 

An Inventory of Church Goods in this County, as returned 
by King Edward VI. 's Commissioners in 155253, is included 
as an appendix, being the first time these returns have been 
published in their entirety for this County. 

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LUSUS REGIUS 

A Volume of Hitherto Unpublished Autograph 
Works by 

KING JAMES 

THE FIRST OF ENGLAND AND SIXTH 
OF SCOTLAND 

HER LATE MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA graciously accepted the 
Dedication of the Volume scarcely a month before her lamented death. 

The title-page is an exact collotype reproduction, mutatis mutandis, 
of the beautiful title-page specially designed and engraved for the folio 
edition of the king's works, published under his own supervision in 
1616. The text is accompanied by several Collotype Reproductions 
of the pages of the book, and by the courteous permission of Sir Robert 
Gresley, Baronet, the frontispiece is a fine portrait of King James, 
which has never hitherto been published. 

Of this unique and highly interesting work 275 copies only have 
been printed, of which 250 numbered copies only arc for sale. 13 x gi 
inches. Price 425. net. 

ATHENMVM : ' These are for literary history nothing short of treasure trove. . . . The 
poems interest chiefly because they are history. A very pleasant reflection of the man and 
his time. Mr. Rait is to be complimented.' 

DAILT NEK'S : Messrs. Archibald Constable & Co. have produced Mr. Rail's edition of 
Luiia Rtgiut in a most sumptuous form. It contains a portrait of the Royal author, Jamet I., 
which has only been privately reproduced before ; the original design eiecuted for the title- 
page of 1616 ; and several MSS., now published for the first time from a copy found in the 
Bodleian Library, and evidently written by the dreamy son of Mary Stuart and Lord Darnley 
in his earlier yean. They all show traces of the influence of his tutors, George Buchanan 
and Sir Peter Seaton, in an artificial atmosphere of their humanistic pedantry ; but they place 
the character of the king in a somewhat novel and certainly attractive light, and the verses 
" On Women " arc a graceful proof of his sportsmanlike knowledge of Scotch natural history. 
... In binding, type, and paper the volume leaves nothing to be desired.' 

LITERATURE : 'A sumptuous and beautiful book is LUIUI Regiui. . . . The volume 
is an interesting one, and our best thanks are due to the editor. Perhaps the last instance of 
her late Majesty's sentiment towards the Stewarts was her consent to accept the dedication of 
this book, which is now inscribed to her memory.' 

SCOTSMAN : It is a rare, if not unexampled, thing that meritorious specimens of 
poetic art from a kingly hand should have to wait for some three centuries before being given 
to the world ; and one thinks none the worse of James for having withheld some of the fruits 
of his " ingyne " from a public that in his day was ready to applaud anything that he wrote. 
. . . Great interest attaches to the unpublished MSS. that alone are printed and provided 
with introductions by the editor of the beautiful work, which Mr. Rait has inscribed to the 
memory of Queen Victoria, who before her death accepted the dedication of these poems by 
her " direct lineal ancestor." ' 

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CONSTABLE'S 

Time Table of Modern 
History A.D. 400-1870 

Compiled and arranged by M. MORISON. 160 pp., 
about 1 5 in. x 1 2 in. 1 2s. bd. net. 

CONTENTS : Parallel Vertical Tables Genealogical Tables Ruling 
Monarchs General Chart of Ancient and Modern History Index 
Maps Europe showing the Barbarian Invasions : Europe, A.D. 45 1 ; 
Europe, A.D. 476; Europe, A.D. 500; Europe, A.D. 768-814; Europe, 
A.D. 962 ; Europe showing the spread of Christianity, circa 1000 ; 
Europe, A.D. 1360; Europe, A.D. 1648; Europe, A.D. 1740; Central 
and Eastern Europe, 1814-1863. 

The work is an epitome of Modern History, 4001870, 
and constitutes a book of reference invaluable to historical 
students. Facts and dates in the history, not of Europe 
alone, but also of Asia and America, are dealt with. 

The tables consist of parallel vertical columns, each column 
containing a history of one of the important nations of the 
world during the period covered. 

The work also contains a series of the more important 
European Genealogical Tables, complete list of ruling 
Monarchs and Popes, a chart showing a bird's-eye view of 
ancient and modern history, and a full index. Added to these 
are a series of Maps showing the barbarian migrations over 
Europe, the spread of Christianity and the various important 
territorial changes which have taken place in Europe since the 
year 400 A.D. 

THE SCHOOLMASTER : ' This is a most valuable book of reference for teachers and 
students of history. . . . We can heartily recommend it as a work of real usefulness.' 
THE ACADEMY : 'A most valuable book, and almost deserves the adjective "monumen- 
tal." It is a compendium of historical dates viewed from almost every possible aspect. No 
student should think his shelves complete without this uniquely valuable book.' THE 
DAILY NEWS : 'To the professional historian this volume will prove a convenient " ready 
reckoner " ; to the amateur it will come as a boon and a blessing.' WESTMINSTER 
GAZETTE : ' The information is given in the clearest type, with ample margins, and as a 
book of reference it is one of the easiest to consult with the assurance of satisfactory results." 
THE GUARDIAN : ' Remarkably accurate. . . . We can conscientiously recommend the 
book as a companion to the histories of Europe.' 

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2 WHITEHALL GARDENS WESTMINSTER 



OS 

uo 

A6 

rvo.7 



The Ancestor 



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